Collar stay
rigid tab of metal, plastic, horn, or baleen inserted into a collar point to hold it in place
A collar stay, collar stick, collar bone (British English), collar tab (British English), collar stiffener, or collar stiff is a shirt accessory consisting of a smooth strip of rigid material, rounded at one end and pointed at the other, inserted into specially made pockets on the underside of a shirt collar to stabilize the collar's points. The stays ensure that the collar lies flat against the collarbone, looking crisp and remaining in the correct place.
Collar stays can be made from a variety of materials, including metal (such as brass, stainless steel, or sterling silver), horn, baleen, mother of pearl, or plastic. Shirts often come with plastic stays that may eventually need to be replaced if they bend; metal replacements do not have this problem.
Collar stays can be found in haberdashers, fabric- and sewing-supply stores and men's clothing stores. They are manufactured in multiple lengths to fit different collar designs, or may be designed with a means to adjust the length of the collar stay.
There are many variations to the traditional collar stay. Some metallic collar stays are sold with a magnet, which is used to hold the stiffened collar in place against the shirt. A different type of collar stay discreetly adds a button hook on one end, to help fasten tiny buttons on dress shirts; e.g. placket, cuffs or button down collars.
The public source identifies “Collar stay” as rigid tab of metal, plastic, horn, or baleen inserted into a collar point to hold it in place. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Collar, stay and rigid.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2626569. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Collar stay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.