Paper collars for men’s shirts already appeared in connection with a previous post on this site. Actually, collars have been a lot on my mind, especially after coming across a dead stock of vintage men’s collars from the 19th century.
The starched collars - more or less in the same size but by two different brands, Brighella and Bertram - were made using a sort of plasticised papery material, so you can’t really wash them and, unfortunately, some of them were ruined by annoying yellowish age stains (even though they had never been worn).
Yet I hate throwing relatively "new" (= "never worn") things out, so I rescued the lot and started thinking what to do with it. Multiple walks in antiquarian markets did the rest: what’s the cheapest item you find on stalls at second-hand markets or at antiquarians’? You got it, postcards.
I bought 14 (used) vintage postcards (I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just bought what I found), cut bits and pieces out and applied two different postcards to each collar adding scraps of fabric, beads and crystals, coming up with a project based on transforming vintage menswear into modern womenswear that I called “One Collar A Day, One Story A Day”, 7 collars for men’s shirts, each one reinvented and each one telling a story.
After appearing on the site the collection will be dismembered and each collar will be sent to a different friend of mine, symbolically being used as a "postal collar". In this way the postcards included in the collars will somehow keep on travelling, though in another form and format.
Today it’s Monday and the story is set between London and Lugano, the third financial power in Switzerland.
The wearer of this collar works at the London Stock Exchange and she is sick and tired about her job. A colleague has just mentioned her the city of Lugano and she starts dreaming not about its banking services, but about having a quiet holiday on the lake.
The dream shatters the reality like the destructive lightning in Fortunato Depero’s painting "Fulmine Compositore" (Lightning Composer, 1926 - View this photo), and the wearer drifts off into a visionary state of mind.
What will happen next the protagonist when she wears Tuesday’s collar? You will have to stay tuned to discover it. In the meantime, enjoy Monday’s dream.
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