Воротник: история, конструкция и разновидности

Shaped neckwear that fastens around or frames the neck

In clothing, a collar is the part of a shirt, dress, coat or blouse that fastens around or frames the neck. Among clothing construction professionals, a collar is differentiated from other necklines such as revers and lapels, by being made from a separate piece of fabric, rather than a folded or cut part of the same piece of fabric used for the main body of the garment. A collar may be permanently attached to the main body of the garment (e. g. by stitching) or detachable.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces collar in its modern meaning to c. 1300, when collars served as neck protecting armour.

Today's shirt collars descend from the rectangular band of linen around the neck of 16th century shirts. Separate ruffs exist alongside attached ruffled collars from the mid 16th century, usually to allow starching and other fine finishing, or to make collar laundering easier. During the medieval period and sporadically thereafter, people wore ornamental collars as a form of jewelry.

Band – a strip of fabric that fastens around the neck, perpendicular to the body of the garment, to which a collar proper may be attached. Collar stiffeners, bones or stays – strips of baleen, metal, horn, mother of pearl, or plastic, rounded at one end and pointed at the other, inserted into a man's shirt collar to stiffen it and prevent the points from curling up; usually inserted into the underside of the collar through small slits but sometimes permanently sewn in place. Points – the corners of a collar; in a buttoned down collar, the points are fitted with buttonholes that attach to small buttons on the body of the shirt to hold the collar neatly in place. Spread – the distance between the points of a shirt collar. Stand – the band on a coat or shirt collar that supports the collar itself.

Conventions on fastening the buttons on a collar differ globally. In the United States and the United Kingdom, the top button is virtually always left unbuttoned, unless one is wearing a necktie, but unbuttoning two or more buttons is seen as overly casual. By contrast, in Slavic countries, including at least Poland, and Ukraine, the top button is buttoned even in the absence of a tie.

From the contrast between the starched white shirt collars worn by businessmen in the early 20th century and the blue chambray workshirts worn by laborers comes the use of collar colors in job designation, the "workforce colorwheel". Examples are blue collar, pink collar and white collar.