HERE’S a classic subway placard ad found on one of the vintage trainsets the Transit Museum rolls out every so often, mostly in June, September and December, an ad for Arrow Collars. You might remember Arrow as a shirt manufacturer but this ad is specifically for shirt collars. Before the 1930s, shirts came without collars and detachable collars were sold and thus, you had to but both shirts and collars; things got easier after that when shirts were manufactured with the collars stitched on.
Cluett, Peabody & Co. of Troy, NY were originally collar manufacturers and created the Arrow brand of detachable shirt collars. According to the Free Dictionary, “About 1905 the company began an advertising campaign that featured an idyllic young man wearing an Arrow shirt with the detached collar… Hundreds of printed advertisements were produced from 1907 to 1930 featuring the Arrow Collar Man. The fictional Arrow collar man became an icon and by 1920 received more than 17 thousand fan letters a day.”
I have a personal connection to Cluett-Peabody because for many years, both my mother Betty and grandmother B. worked in its office in Troy. In the photo above, my grandmother is seated second from left, and my mother is standing in the second row, fourth from left, next to the tall guy. As usual, she is the prettiest woman in the picture.
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4/17/23