Fused Versus Sewn Collars

Fundamentals Of Dress Shirt Collars

For those that love their dress shirts, should the shirt col­lar be fused or non fused? Hot glued or sewn? There are some good argu­ments for both meth­ods, but before we go any fur­ther on this hot top­ic, let’s give you some back­ground.

A col­lar is made up of two pieces, the top and bot­tom. Between these two pieces is a stur­dy inter­lin­ing, which gives the col­lar its stiff­ness and strength. These two pieces are either fused or sewn togeth­er. Below, you can see the white inter­lin­ing over­lay­ing the shirt’s fab­ric for the col­lar before it’s fused or sewn togeth­er.

How our dress shirts are made:

Fused dress shirt collars

A fused col­lar means the inter­lin­ing is heat­ed and glued togeth­er through a fus­ing machine. A stiff, firm col­lar is favored with most dress shirts and the fused col­lar pro­vides the best results, mak­ing it a pop­u­lar choice.  There used to be con­cerns with fused col­lars bub­bling after some wear and tear, but this isn’t a prob­lem if the shirt mak­er uses a high end machine like we do.

 

Sewn dress shirt collars

A col­lar that is sewn into the col­lar, non-fused, is hand stitched by a tai­lor, a very exact and detailed process. It’s the tra­di­tion­al way of doing things and avail­able with bespoke or cus­tom tai­lored dress shirts, which we also offer as an option. It will lend itself a less struc­tured appear­ance and it’s soft­er in feel, much more com­fort­able than a fused col­lar. It’s also very durable and won’t suf­fer any­time soon from wear and tear. For a stiffer col­lar, some tai­lors can use a thick­er inter­lin­ing. Due to the skill required for a sewn col­lar, it does mark up the cost for a cus­tom dress shirt.

So there’s real­ly no sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage of either style. It basi­cal­ly comes down to what you pre­fer. The fused col­lar is pop­u­lar for its firm, crisp col­lar, which is per­fect for the work place or a wed­ding. It’s also eas­i­er for shirt mak­ers to pro­duce because it’s pressed through a machine. A hand tai­lored sewn col­lar def­i­nite­ly takes more time to put togeth­er and costs more, but has a soft­er col­lar that’s very durable. It also has a clas­sic, tra­di­tion­al appeal to it.

Per­son­al­ly, I pre­fer the stiff, fused col­lar for my for­mal dress shirts and a sewn col­lar for some­thing laid back, like a ging­ham shirt. Best of both worlds, I guess.

So what’s your pref­er­ence? Fused or non-fused?