I’m not talking of the TV show White Collar from some years ago with Matt Bomer and Tim DeKay that I really enjoyed at the time…
… I’m talking about this following kind that my dad also used to wear when he used to occasionally perform church services. In younger years it was like a white tie while I mostly remember him in later years (as a guest preacher) when he wore an actual white collar.
I never really thought of the collar as very sexy, until Father Ralph de Bricassart (Richard Chamberlain) from The Thornbirds…
And I’m not alone. Apparently Harry Kennedy in The Vicar of Dibley finds white collars very sexy too! Yes, I made gifs…
In these gifs it looks like he’s actually wearing one himself. Premonition for what was yet to come with The Man From Rome project that has started filming in Seville?
The beginning of the book The Seville Communion describes Richard’s character Lorenzo Quart like this:
“At the beginning of May, Lorenzo Quart received the order that would take him to Seville. An area of low pressure was moving towards the eastern Mediterranean and that morning it was raining on St. Peter’s Square, so Quart had to skirt the square, taking shelter under Bernini’s colonnade. As he walked up to the Portone di Bronzo, he saw the sentry standing with his halberd in the gloomy marble-and-granite corridor and preparing to ask for his identification. The man, tall and strong with a crew cut, was wearing the red, yellow, and blue-striped Renaissance uniform and black beret of the Swiss Guard. He stared at Quart’s well-cut suit, matching black silk shirt with a Roman collar, and his fine, handmade leather shoes. Definitely not, the guard seemed to be thinking, one of the grey bagarozzi – the officials of the complex Vatican bureaucracy who passed through every day. But neither was the visitor a high-ranking member of the Curia, a prelate or monsignor. They wore a cross, a purple trim or a ring at the very least, and they definitely didn’t arrive on foot in the rain. They entered the Vatican palace by another gate, St. Anne’s, in comfortable chauffeur-driven cars. Anyway, despite grey hair cut short like a soldier’s, the man looked too young to be a prelate. He stood politely before the guard and searched amongst the various credit cards in his wallet for his ID card. Very tall, slim, sure of himself, he looked calmly at the guard. His nails were well kept, and he wore an elegant watch and simple silver cufflinks. He couldn’t have been over forty.“
RA Bulgaria on Twitter found the following picture of Richard Armitage as Quart, filming today in Seville…
And there it is in that picture, the white Roman collar on Richard that I’ve been looking forward to! Can’t wait to see more and better images of him wearing it. You can also see a hint of Quart’s shiny “fine, handmade leather” black shoes and the trousers look like they could be part of a “well-cut suit”. We can also see a bit grey in his hair, just as we have also seen in Richard’s birthday video from a month and a half ago…
So, yes, I’ve got to agree with Harry Kennedy here: “There’s something quite sexy about that white collar thing…” and the grey hair… and the black clothes… I know little about the story (I really should start reading the book beyond that first page) but I am so looking forward to seeing more of this white collar look!
The Book of Esther 