The White Shirt Once Meant You Don't Work With Your Hands - and That Was the Whole Point

Today you buy a white shirt with a romantic cut for a few thousand denars and wear it with jeans on a Saturday afternoon. Some four hundred years ago, that same white shackle around the neck meant you belonged to those who don't work with their hands - and that was the whole point.

In the Spanish Golden Age, a white shirt with a lavish collar was an exclusive mark of nobility. The obsession was focused on the gorget - an ornamental jewelled collar - and later on the pleated ruff, which required time, money and a whole army of people to maintain. It wasn't the fabric that was the luxury, but the effort behind it.

And the effort was the real status symbol. The collars were made of expensive lace and required specialised craftsmen - "collar setters" - who starched and pleated them with metal moulds. Keeping the white flawless was nearly impossible: it required a rare blue-white bleaching powder monopolised by the Dutch East India Company, so a black market for it even formed in Spain. The white collar was literally bought from smugglers.

And here comes the best part. The heavy collars required metal frames that held the neck upright and simply did not allow physical work - if you wear such a collar, you cannot bend over anything. Designer Lorenzo Caprile notes that it was precisely this forced posture that created the stereotype of the "haughty Spanish gentleman". By 1600 the collars had reached such proportions that art historians today can date a painting to within five years just by their width.

It all ended when in 1615 King Philip IV replaced the lavish collars by decree with flatter cuts - a fashion abolished by signature. All that remained was the white shirt, which today we wear with no idea that it was once a border between those who work and those who watch others work. The next time you take it out of the wardrobe, remember that it was once proof that you have no need to dirty your hands.