Retro again

In the course of my researches focused on the 1930s the issue of streamlining inevitably arises. It was a  concept first conceived by industrial designers who stripped Art Deco design of its extraneous ornamentation in favor of the aerodynamic pure-line concept of motion and speed. The outcome was the ultra-modernization of everyday objects, clocks, radios, telephones, furniture as well as trains, automobiles and in this instance, delivery vans.

The Glasgow firm Holland Coachcraft was known for its exuberant embrace of streamlining, and I've wallowed in the imagery available on the interwebs.

And then I noticed that many of these vehicles carried Collars Ltd branding and that rang a bell!

I was reminded that stiff, starched detachable collars were obligatory for the well-dressed gentleman for many a year, and in the United Kingdom the Birmingham firm ensured that these were delivered (in those magnificent streamlined vans but later by post) to their discerning clientele. By the 1950s, however, demand was waning as the collar-attached shirt achieved respectability. Eventually the clientele consisted, I surmise, almost exclusively of parsons, priests, vicars and ministers who needed well-maintained clerical collars. I don't think my memory disserves me if I claim to recall deliveries from Collars Ltd when my father was minister of St George's Church in Edinburgh.