Nick Ryan: The lack of guys wearing collared shirts these days is a surprise, but I’ll never be one of them

The collared shirt is on the wane with plenty of blokes rocking a simple T these days. Nick Ryan laments the lack of shirt wearers and explains why he’ll never be one of them.

Last Thursday I was judging a wine show in Mildura.

Outside it was so hot that mortar turned to liquid between bricks and the river looked like a steam bath.

I looked around the room and realised I was dressed differently to everyone else. I was the only one with a collar on my shirt.

It’s rare I feel the need to comment on fashion – I’m as qualified to do so as a gibbon with a scalpel is to operate on your heart – but this week I want to muse on matters sartorial.

I can’t wear T-shirts.

Nick Ryan is rusted on to the collared shirt. Picture: Calum Robertson

Well, more won’t than can’t – but the result is still the same.

There’s a whole drawer in my cupboard sitting bare, sadly missing the most utilitarian of wardrobe items, that simple garment that covers a billion backs but not mine.

You’re more likely to see me walking down the street carrying a placard that reads “I ate your pet for breakfast” than wearing a T-shirt.

They’re supposed to be all about comfort but on the rare occasions I’m wearing one I feel as uptight as a condemned man’s sphincter.

There’s a few reasons why.

Most obviously, but not exclusively, is the matter of mass.

I’m hardly a small man and my body has all the definition of a one-page dictionary.

If Chesty Bond had a large, hairy, man-boobed brother he’d still look better in a T-shirt than me.

Shorts were a fashion hit at this year’s Melbourne Cup. But Nick would be happy to see there were still plenty of collared shirts. Picture: David Caird

Although it’s as much mental as physical, I just feel naked without a collar.

Not in a ‘popped up to prove I went to Princes way’, it’s just the back of my neck is a lot like a promiscuous man’s penis. It’s better off covered.

There are multiple benefits to my always wearing shirts.

I keep the cufflink and ironing board manufacturers in business, my fingers stay nimble with all that buttoning and I can dress myself each day without having to lift my arms over my head.

But I see where I’m missing out too.

I’m giving up my chance to be a walking billboard for someone else’s profit and I’m going to have to actually talk to you about the music I like, rather than refer to the sartorial shorthand that is the obscure band T-shirt.

You won’t catch Nick in a T-shirt like this.

I have no opportunity to express fabric-borne irony by parading around with some obtuse image across my chest and you’ll just have to find out for yourself if ‘I’m with Stupid’.

And I’ll never be as cool and achingly clever as that bloke on The Gruen Transfer, who has spent so much time loving the sound of his own voice that he never learned how buttons work. Or the boards of major airlines for that matter. But I can live with that.

I am what I am and that reality comes with collars, cuffs and buttons.

So that’s me down to a T, a man who’s constantly got the shirts, some days I’ll give a tuck and others I’ll just let it all hang out.

Originally published as Nick Ryan: The lack of guys wearing collared shirts these days is a surprise, but I’ll never be one of them