Hot weather kilting in San Diego

[Tobus]

A note on the shirt: I believe that I have read here that button down collars are not traditional in the UK but I wear one as a concession to the fact that it is hard to find short sleeved, button up, shirts here without them. That and I quite liked the pattern of green and blue check on this shirt in addition to the reasonable price of $16 at Costco.

This is a major peeve of mine. I've never understood the American fascination with button-down collars, or why they were invented in the first place. It's not like there's anything special about the USA that causes our collars to flap wildly about if they aren't buttoned down. And in the rare instance where it would be an issue, it's usually nothing that a starched collar with a metal collar stay wouldn't fix. If it's just a matter of wanting to keep a collar flap straight and well-positioned, collar stays do the job just fine. Button-down collars just don't make any sense to me, yet it's difficult to find collared shirts without them.

I usually pass on shirts with button-down collars. But if for some reason I do end up with one (I do have a few), I just leave the collar flaps unbuttoned when I'm not wearing a tie. They only get buttoned if my shirt front is buttoned all the way up to the neck. The reason being, as your photo shows, the buttoned collar stands up oddly when the flaps are buttoned but the shirt front is not.