For one reason or another many men have strong feelings about button down collars.  From a fashion perspective they have both a specific functionality and make a certain fashion statement.  It’s important for a man to know both of these when introducing this type of collar into their wardrobe. 

Did you know that a button down collar is actually NOT proper for all occasions?  I personally know several men who do not realize this including my father who to this day does not own a dress shirt without a button down collar. 

First, the history of the button down collar is a relatively quick one that helps us understand it’s true purpose.   This type of collar is actually an ad-hoc solution that a polo player from Great Britain threw together to avoid having his collars hit him in the face as he galloped full-speed down the field in a heated polo match.   This occurred in the 1800’s and in 1896, Brooks Brothers brought this collar style to America and they continue to produce button down collars to this day.  So the purpose of telling you the history is to point out that the button down collar is meant to be a sporty, less causal look.  It was also intended to be a blue collar working man’s shirt style.

The anatomy of a button down collar is also significant.  The eyelet and button itself should be smaller than the rest of the buttons on the shirt with the exception of the gauntlet buttons (the forearm buttons). 

The larger buttons that close to your face would be a distraction therefore it is not recommended to replace a button down collar button with a larger spare button for this reason.  Plus, it is doubtful that you will be able to get it a larger button through the eyelet anyway.  So, please use a spare collar button or gauntlet button if you lose or destroy a collar button on your dress shirt.

The rules around a button down collar are pretty simple.  Remember that it is a less formal look and you need to use common sense as a guide.  If other people at work are not wearing a button down collar then you probably should not either.  You should not wear a button down collar with a more formal suit like a double-breasted suit or certainly not a tuxedo (Dad are you reading this?). 

This is a more casual, sporty look and should be treated accordingly.

Recently another trend has emerged with button down collars and that is the unbuttoned button down collar as a fashion statement, but not everyone can pull this off.  Unfortunately, most people that try simply just look like they forgot to button up or are simply too lazy to do it. 

If you are going to try to pull this style off, do it with as much confidence as you can and try to go with a sportier dress pant and maybe some loafers to kick it up a notch.

Button down collars should have a place in every man’s wardrobe but they aren’t the only type of dress shirt collar and that can’t be stressed enough.  Make sure that you check out other collar styles and match them to their intended uses as well. 

Hopefully I will have more success convincing people not in my family to explore all of their dress shirt collar options.  In any event at a minimum you now know the origin of the button down collar on a dress shirt.

By Kara Sebbert, lead editor at Fashion Merchandising Degrees.

If you’re a big fan of button down collars on dress shirts, design your own custom men’s dress shirts and style them with your exact preferences in mind.

One company cannot stand alone in order to inspire the movement for co-creation.  That’s why we applaud other companies that are taking on this new trend of working directly with you guys to create the best products possible. One company that is capturing every aspect of this trend is Me and Goji with its make your own customizable cereal and granola products. Check it out for yourself!!

Me and Goji is all about serving the customer.  They have many different organic and delicious cereal ingredient options to help you make tasty morning treats.

i) You first choose a base, goji oats or golden granola or even samurai wheat, move onto what they call 'base enhancements' like choco peanut if you feel like treating yourself or wheat germ for the health conscious.

ii) Moving onto the dried fruits, our favorite was goldenberry and of course goji (which actually turns out to be a Tibetan superfruit from the Himalayas packed with dizzying amounts of nutrients and phytochemicals).  There is also awesome stuff like mulberry, coconut, cranberry and cherry. Finish this pairing, 'Fruit and _ _ _'. You guessed it, choose from pecans, chia, pine, amaranth, soy, flax and a lot more.

A great personalize feature is every cylinder of Me and Goji cereal comes with your name on it and even your own pic! What's yet more amazing is as you choose your ingredients, the nutritional facts (like you'd find on on most foods, i.e. with the calories, fat content, sodium, potassium, carbs, protein, etc) are updated in real-time.

Their tagline, designed by you, handmade by us sums up the co-creation movement pretty well. Let’s keep pushing this co-creation movement. It’s a good thing. 

What's your favorite co-creation company, tell us about them, why they're awesome, and why everyone should support their revolution!

This post was written by Danielle Bentz, a avid co-creator of custom men's dress shirts.

We're pretty big on being transparent here at Blank Label. We want to have an honest relationship with you, we want to tell you when we're screwing up or gloat when we've done something well, it's just more interesting that way.

In honor of our three months from launch on Halloween, not so much in celebration of Scotch Tape's anniversary, but that's still cool, we thought we'd share some earlier versions of our site from the vault. Be warned ... some of these are pretty ugly

Main Site

What www.blank-label.com was on 30th of October 2009, the day before launch. Ha. Definitely makes us laugh. Honestly we're not exactly happy with our current site, hence still the BETA tag. We might keep it up for a while because it leads people to give us a lot of feedback, which in turn helps us improve. You'll see quite a few site improvements we hope you'll like in Feb.

 A design we toyed around with back when we thought selling custom suits online would be a good idea. It was a good design for your straight-up e-commerce site, but just didn't quite have the spice and bite we were looking for.

Custom Men's Dress Shirt Design App

 Before color was cool, and in fact before Zee, our Chief Hamster, and Alec, our Lead Artist, even joined the Blank Team. It seems like a good render, and a front and back view, but was actually really hard to get the fabric colors on the shirt, and probably would've taken forever to load.

The measurement tab here kind of shows you how little we used to know about our loyal shirt designers. Co-created custom men's dress shirts should be a fun process, having that 'Measurements' Tab and expecting guys to either know their body measurements or get a tap to measure themselves was just plain silly. We never quite figured out what we were going to put in that large 'Accessories' Tab either, we'll let you know when we do come up some interesting ideas. In respect to transparency, we'll be sure to run them by you first.

What We're Going to Show You Next Week

 Proudly listening to Matchbox Twenty's How Far We've Come if only we actually knew How Far We Have To Go.

Fan Bi, Chief Shirt, reporting on Blank Label updates on the co-creation blog.

Dsquared2

Amidst the strictly fashion-forward crowd that inhabit Milan during fashion week, Dsquared2 brought confidence and style to their collection with a mixture of different looks and perspectives meshed together, topped off with their signature-cut jeans. 

Leather, studs, and a splash of color brought together a glam/punk theme for Dsquared2’s collection. Male models strutted something manly on the Dsquared2 runway with class and sophistication to rival all of Dsquared2’s previous collections. Imagine if you will, fit men somewhat taller than the average guy who just happen to be extras on a sequel to Fight Club complete with the black eyes and fat lips – this is the 2010 collection for Dsquared2. 

My favorite look for the collection:

One of my favorite looks was a black overcoat with lining on the collar. The pants were classically cut and creased at the top. This is in addition to what looks like to have been a v-neck sweater that was more than a little transparent, slightly covered a black slim tie. A basic white shirt and black pointy-toed shoes topped off the look. Together, the ensemble glittered and screamed, “I was on a date with a married woman and her husband found us just as she was unbuttoning my overcoat!”

Prada

Prada is classic. Since its inception, Prada has made the man look as elegant as possible – but every now and then, like the man – Prada deviates from the script adding the element of surprise and intrigue. This was the case during Milan Fashion Week when Prada premiered its latest collection. 

This collection, ironically – showed more colors than Prada’s spring collection. Purple, yellow, and a vivid magenta took to the runway nestled in overcoats, blazers, suits, and cardigans to accentuate, while trying not to intimidate. Everyman doesn’t necessarily look good in every color. Still, Prada does a good job of bringing together their collection of color amidst their trademark gray, blue, and black. This year, khaki made a guest appearance that was just enough to tease the fashion senses without dulling them. 

My favorite look for the collection:

One of the things that I liked the most about this collection was the appearance of brighter colors. The collection comes off as a fresh perspective. My favorite piece epitomizes the feel for the men’s element of the Prada show. A light-tan overcoat with buttons impeccably placed on the breast and torso of the coat along with black/blue slim slacks dominated the model who also wore a yellow/brown sweater underneath with a basic blue shirt. I will say that Prada did a horrid job of choosing the model, which looked absolutely sickly in the look. Just the same, the perspective was strong and well-stated.

James R Sanders is a Guest Blogger and Fashion Muse for Blank Label's co-creation blog. You can also find his thoughts on Fashion and Brands at James Sanders at Large.

You never need a perfect match when pairing your collared dress shirt with a tie, but sometimes it helps to have a few tips so you don’t create a visual disaster. 

It turns out that a lot of guys are afraid of the bold tie.  They are unsure how to match it.  When to wear it.  If it will offend people.  But we’re loving bold ties especially the new wool, plaid tie trend. 

 awesome visual courtesy of Rigmarole

Bold Ties & Neutral Shirts

Bold ties go with neutral dress shirts. Remember that! If you want to be daring and try out a bold, plaid tie, understand that matching it with a bold shirt can be an eye sore.

A bold striped tie is good too. It’s dashing for a subtle, but sophisticated look.  But again, it’ll only be flattering with a neutral shirt. Otherwise the boldness of a crazy dress shirt and tie can be a real dressing disaster. 

The most important thing when matching bold ties with shirts is to try to pick up on the tones of the tie.  If the tie has any color in it, you should take this into consideration when matching it with a shirt.  A simple pale gray shirt will look great with many bold ties, but sometimes it’s nice to pair a bold blue tie with a pastel blue button-down or sweater.

Bold Shirts & Neutral Ties

Bold shirts are great, especially for the party scene.  If you’re trying to celebrate in a hot plaid print but still want to look formal, check out a laid back tie.  Bold printed shirts and bold printed ties are too much of an eye sore, think about them as too much of a good thing.  If you want to wear a bold striped shirt, or a loud colored shirt, you should think about wearing a toned down tie.  Some great toned down ties this season are charcoal tie options, matte on silk striped.  Charcoal is a great color for a colder season because it’s a change from simple black tone, but still dresses up an outfit. 

Neutral Ties & Neutral Shirts

There’s usually no such category as bold tie with bold shirt.  But, if you can pull off that look than you are one very lucky man.  However, pairing a neutral tie with a neutral shirt can work out well.  Some of our favorite neutral ties include a dark charcoal wool tie, dark forest green silk, and dark purple silk tie.  The dark charcoal wool tie will look good with any pastel colored, neutral button-down you pair it with, that’s why this tie is a hidden gem.  However, if you want something more exciting, try a dark forest green tie with a pale beige, green or gray dress shirt.  The green tones match best with beige-brown, pale green, or pale gray tones and complement each other.  Another option is to match a dark purple silk tie with a pale purple, gray, brown or even pink dress shirt.  Purple tones match best with lighter purple, pale grays, browns, and light pink tones.

This post was written by Danielle Bentz, marketing maven and custom men's dress shirts co-creator for Blank Label.

Ever since I got involved with this custom men's dress shirts company, my friends consider me an expert on men's dress shirts. Not just styling, but how to iron them, how to fold them, even how to care for them. I wish we had all the answers. But my answer is probably just as good as their's.

But here are 7 humorous ways how NOT to wash men's dress shirts:

1. Spray it with Febreeze and hope that funky smell will go away so you can wear it again without anyone noticing. I don't even recommend this in emergencies.

2. Applying a bleach pen to stains, and then just wearing the shirt again because it's odorless and now without visible stains. Come on man, throw it in the washer!

3. Only handwashing that one part of your dress shirt where you spilled spaghetti to get the color and smell out. If you're going to go through the trouble of washing one part of your dress shirt, wash the rest of it while you're at it!

4. Dunking it a few times in hot or warm water mixed with deodorant soap. First of all, please use laundry detergent if you're really going to handwash for clothes. I've seen men make this mistake this before. It's sad how many guys I know who don't know how to properly do laundry.

5. Excessively steaming it instead of just throwing it in the wash or taking it to the dry cleaners. Sure, the dry cleaners puts harsh chemicals on your shirt and can damage the shirt overtime, but steaming your men's dress shirt is not a proper way to clean it.

6. Washing it with your other favorite dress shirts. This is a HUGE faux pas. It's true that your dress shirts get jealous of each other. You never know which shirts will come out of the wash, and which will never return (no, I'm just kidding about this one).

7. Waiting until the last minute when you run out of dress shirts, and clothes for that matter, to hit the laundromat.

 courtesy of dobenjamin

Anyone else have funny recommendations for how NOT to wash your men's dress shirts?

Suggestions for how to properly wash a dress shirt? Might be an idea for a follow-up post.

This dress shirts article was written by Danny Wong for the co-creation blog.

This growing trend in denim wear is getting hot, but is it for you?  A lot of girls are already accustomed to turning up their jeans for a collared denim look when wearing flats, or sneakers.  However, does this look translate well for men?  

 one classic example of what we're talking about thanks to lostwithoutwords

Men’s magazines such as GQ are offering this look as the new single-man sheik.  So what’s the issue?  Well to be completely honest, although this new style can take your denim to a new sexy extreme, it can also make you look shorter, like you don’t have enough jean to cover your legs, or just plain like a tool.  Men who value their fashion and sex appeal should be daring to try this turned up jean style, but be careful to follow a few steps.

1. Don’t get too anal.  If you’re usually OCD about a lot of things, this style may not be for you.  Think about how many times you would have to fix your pant leg if one side was folded up higher than the other as you walk around town.  This style is meant to give you a laid back, careless fashion, so don’t worry about the neatness of the cuff. 
2. Don’t over-fold.  One cuff is enough.  If you start multiple layers of cuffs by folding the pant over and over, your look will become cheap and overworked.  Chill with the folds.
3. Don’t show your bare skin.  I’m sure your ankles are very manly and sexy, but no one wants the make their jeans look two sizes too small…helloooo redneck.  Make your look fresh and buy pants that you can fold once without baring skin.

Most men do not know how a dress shirt should properly fit. Also, most off-the-rack men's dress shirts never fit right because standard sizes are set up to fit 'well enough.'

Here are a few ways to tell if your men's dress shirts fit:

1. You can comfortably button up your collar without choking yourself. The collar should be big enough for you to slip in a finger or two, and should not feel tight. It should not feel loose either.

2. The sleeve length is perfect when your dress shirt's cuffs just end at your wrists when your arms are at your sides.

3. The dress shirt's cuff is only a little bit wider than your wrist, but not wide enough that you can pull your hand through your cuff without unbuttoning.

4. The chest circumference of your men's dress shirt fits right if you can comfortably move your arms without too much restriction, and the seams connecting the body of the shirt to the sleeves are resting on your shoulders, not above your bicep.

5. The girth (waist) of your dress shirt is only a few inches larger, circumference-wise, than you are. This way, there isn't excess baggage from your dress shirt around your waist when your shirt's tucked in, and that it's not so tight that your seams are close to splitting. When baggy dress shirts are tucked in, they give the impression that you have a muffin-top, regardless of if you're an athlete at 170lbs or a lean 135lb man.

6. The dress shirt is long enough to fit your preference, whatever that may be. There are special dress shirts that are meant only to be worn tucked in, others that are only meant to be worn untucked, while some are long enough but short enough to wear either way.

Most dress shirts you buy at your normal retail store will not give you the fit that you need. For me, I would never buy a dress shirt unless it was slim fit with a 14-14 1/2 collar size. Finding a shirt with those size preferences was a nightmare though. The market was 'too small' for all big retailers to serve. A slim fit dress shirt with a 14-14 1/2 collar would fit perfectly in all areas except the collar. I truly needed a collar that was 15-15 1/2, but shirts that came with that collar size were too big in ALL other areas. In my old shopping days, I had to compromise the fit of my collar to have a fit that worked on every other part of my dress shirt. But you shouldn't compromise your comfort and style (I was never able to button the top button without feeling like someone was choking me, and I couldn't comfortably wear a tie this way either) by buying just any dress shirt off-the-rack. Shoot for bespoke tailoring, or get custom men's dress shirts that you designed with the perfect fit in mind. You can start designing your own dress shirts online with our dress shirt design app now.

This post was written by Danny Wong for the co-creation blog, trying to convince men to adopt co-creation and forget about buying off-the-rack.

At Blank Label we’re all about self-expression and we specialize in giving all of you guys the tools you need to become inspired.  Whether it’s in using your creativity to design your own custom men's dress shirts, or to inspire passion for expression itself, we want to ignite your creative side.  And why do we think this expression is important?? Well think about it this way…social media is all about self-expression.  And since social media is the new wave in communication you should optimize the way you are presenting yourself on the web.

 courtesy of one cool diagram thing from ivan walsh

Here are 5 simple ways to be sure that you are expressing your own label:

1) First you have to figure out what you have to say.  This can take a lot of thinking because there are a million things that people want others to know about themselves.  There may be one thing you would want to express to your employer and another thing you want to express to your peers.  However, you need to decide what is most important to you.  Make two lists of roles you fill in life: Writer, Traveler, Explorer, or Musician….and a list of things you are passionate about: Cooking, Fashion, Design, or Modern Literature (the more specific the better).  Once you have explored and defined yourself then you can realize what you want to express to others.

2) Next you should optimize your appearance (hint- This doesn’t mean your face).  This means figure out where are represented online- your facebook, twitter, blog, flickr accounts.  Go to each of these sites and make sure they are expressing who you are.  On twitter you can follow authors if you enjoy writing, personalize your backgrounds to express your passions, or even tweet about things that are interesting you in some of the roles that you play.  In your blog you can focus on things you are passionate about.  The more specific you are the more others can realize who you are which can help you create valuable connections with people working on similar things in their life.

3) Explore your interests.  Now that you know who you are, you should be doing more to look into your passions.  You won’t believe some of the things you can find other people doing that you might be able to connect with.  View other photographer’s albums on flickr if you enjoy taking pictures.  Follow politicians on Twitter to see different projects they are working on.  Research blogs of young fashion designers it in order to see how they are succeeding or what connections they may have in the fashion industry.  All of this exploration will help you build your network and inspire you to make great things out of things you love to do or learn about.

4) Look for opportunities to reach out online and build your personal label.  When you find someone doing something cool that interests you contact them by email (whatever you are comfortable with).  Tell them who you are, why you think what they’re doing is great and maybe ask them a question that might help or inspire you.  Hey if they make it in life, you’ll have made a very valuable connection just by reaching out. And no matter what, you’ll still gain some valuable information either way.

5)  Cement your personal label.  Do something bold like creating a simple personal website, starting your own blog or even just synchronizing all of your social media sites.  From all of your exploration of your interests you should have a good idea of what others are doing out there in your fields of interest.  Don’t simply copy their websites or blogs, make it all your own and have fun with it.  Whichever path you take just make sure you constantly update any information you have online to make your personal label express what you’re all about.  This will give you the best optimization of your online expression.

This post was for our co-creation blog by Danielle Bentz.

At Blank Label we’re all about co-creation, in particular, co-created custom men's dress shirts. That is what happens when we combine your creativity with our resources to create something completely original. At the start of the year, 3 Things for Blank Blog in 2010, we promised we'd keep you updated on what was going on in the world of co-creation, what were interesting co-created products, why it was all so important. We highlighted some trends in Co-Creation, Mass-Customization and Fashion 2.0. Today we're asking what you think. What would happen if more companies looked into integrating their customer into the creation process more?  Would companies like Subway and Dell have been as successful if they didn’t offer such customizable products?  We sure don’t think so.

 courtesy of one very cool pic from fabio aro

If you take a deeper look a lot of different companies, large and small, are embracing the co-creation trend.  Car companies like Mini will let you build your own car models online to find a design that best fits your style.  Now, we can all agree that they aren’t there yet with full co-creation.  I mean, there are only so many models, colors and features to customize, but these companies are allowing for more customer input which is great!!

We want you gets to get excited about making your own choices.  Companies should work with their customers instead of just serving them.  That’s why we always ask for your opinion in what turns you on, makes you tick, or turns you off about what we do. 

Let us know what you think the next trend in co-creation will be…What's the next great product that needs to be co-created ... Who is the up-and-coming co-creation company that's going to change everything about how consumers and producers interact ...

This post was written by Chief Shirt, Fan Bi for our co-creation blog.