Only five years ago, the East Coast Finance Bro and the West Coast Tech Bro had just about nothing in common.
The classic Wall Street guy stuffed himself into a stiff, impeccably tailored suit as a badge of honor, while the Silicon Valley guy scootered around in a hoodie, virtue signaling to the world that he was too busy innovating to care about clothes.
Today? You’d be forgiven if you can’t tell them apart.
We’re in the era of the “Fin-Tech Bro,” a longevity-lauding professional who wants to “hack” his work, his health and, you guessed it, even his wardrobe.
These days, the guy structuring debt in Midtown and the guy agentizing workflows in Palo Alto both track their sleep on a fitness wearable (probably more than one), down the same personalized nootropic stack and desperately need clothes that feel like gym wear but look sharp enough for a board meeting.
Silicon Valley founders have finally grown up (Facebook is old enough to drink!) and realized they need a structured collar for their investor Zoom calls.
Meanwhile, Wall Street has aggressively loosened up. Nearly half of the traders, portfolio managers and strategists in a recent Bloomberg poll even boldly claimed that shorts are fine at the office. Uh, no.
(I’m going to make it clear right here, right now: shorts are not OK at the office. No, no. That wasn’t a question.)
But whether they are dressing up or dressing down, they both need a middle ground. That middle ground looks a lot like a certain $88 polo with a real dress collar.
Collars & Co. The Original Dress Collar Polo
Enter the Dress Collar Polo from Collars & Co.: a short-sleeved, four-way stretch polo with a firm dress shirt collar and built-in collar stays. It retails for only $88 and comes in semi-spread, English spread and Oxford button-down collars. The semi-spread alone is available in 36 colors and patterns. Sizes run from small to 4XL in original, relaxed and original tall fits.
Why are finance guys and tech guys suddenly buying the same shirt?
The remote work party is officially over, and they both got called back to the office five days a week.
The transition back to fluorescent-lit desks has been swift and unforgiving. JPMorgan Chase required its massive workforce to return to the office five days a week starting in March 2025.
The tech world abruptly followed suit: Meta’s Instagram ordered its U.S. staff with assigned desks back full-time starting in February 2026.
Suddenly, a massive influx of men not necessarily known for their sartorial prowess need to look put together five days a week, and neither camp knows what to wear anymore. The banker’s opting out of the stiff cotton dress shirt he drops off at the dry cleaner every Friday and the software engineer refuses to look like a banker.
The birth of the ultimate wardrobe “hack”
Founder Justin Baer started Collars & Co. in 2021 to solve this exact problem. He spent more than a decade living and working in Manhattan, wearing what he calls the Midtown uniform: a dress shirt under a sweater or quarter-zip.
“My office was always freezing, so the sweater was a necessity,” Baer tells The Post.
“But wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt underneath was miserable. The sleeves would bunch up around my elbows, the shirt would pull and wrinkle, and I’d spend half the day adjusting it. Then I’d have to get the shirt dry cleaned.”
Then it clicked. “I wasn’t wearing the dress shirt because I loved the shirt. I was wearing it because I wanted the collar,” he says.
“That was really the aha moment. Why was I putting up with all this discomfort when the only part anyone could see was the collar?”
His fix was simple: take the comfort of a golf polo and add a proper, structured dress-shirt collar. The idea sat with him for years until the pandemic gave him time to act on it, even though, in his words, “I had no experience in fashion or manufacturing. I just knew there had to be a better way to get that look.”
The idea moved fast. Baer told the Sharks he’d sold 92,000 shirts and done $5.4 million in online sales before his 2022 “Shark Tank” episode, where Mark Cuban and Peter Jones bought in for $300,000 plus a $700,000 line of credit in exchange for 10% of the company.
The brand’s momentum hasn’t slowed since, and it eventually opened a brick-and-mortar store on Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side this spring to serve the finance crowd directly.
Baer says he never set out to dress one particular industry, but the two coasts buy the shirt for opposite reasons.
“On Wall Street, there’s still a strong tradition of dressing professionally,” he says. “The finance customer loves that he can wear our shirt under a quarter-zip, sweater or blazer and get that classic, tailored look without dealing with a stiff dress shirt all day.”
Out West, comfort comes first. “Those guys have always prioritized comfort and performance,” Baer says. “But even in tech, there are investor meetings, presentations, dinners and situations where you want to look a little more put together.”
“The Wall Street guy wants the comfort of Silicon Valley. The Silicon Valley guy wants a little of the polish of Wall Street. We give them both. And increasingly, I think those two worlds are dressing more alike.”
How does a dress collar polo look under a sweater or blazer?
It looks exactly like a traditional dress shirt. Under a crewneck, quarter-zip or blazer, the only visible element is the collar, and that collar is architecturally built like premium formalwear.
The built-in stays keep the points standing up crisp and sharp, instead of flopping sadly into the neckline like a standard, flimsy knit polo collar. In fact, the brand says it’s guaranteed never to warp. The semi-spread is even cut perfectly to handle a tie if the occasion calls for it.
The one tell is the sleeve. Under a jacket, there’s no shirt cuff peeking out at the wrist, which a strict suit-and-tie office would flag. But in a modern business casual or hybrid office? Nobody would even notice.
Is it comfortable enough to wear all day?
That is the entire pitch. The body of the shirt is crafted from a performance fabric that the brand compares to a modern, high-end golf shirt. It features 4-way stretch, wicks moisture away from the body during stressful strategy meetings and it’s completely wrinkle-resistant and quick-drying.
Crucially, it goes in the washing machine and hangs dry. Screw that weekly dry cleaning bill. This wash-and-go design fits perfectly into the Fin-Tech Bro’s optimization mindset.
“My philosophy is that getting dressed should be the easiest part of your day,” Baer says. “That’s really what we built Collars & Co. around.”
How does Collars & Co. sizing run?
The fit leans tailored. Not tight, or small, but tailored. The brand recommends sizing up if you prefer a roomier fit through the torso, or bypassing the standard cut entirely by opting straight for the relaxed cut. Tall guys are also covered, with an original tall option available in many of the core colors.
Is the Collars & Co. Dress Collar Polo actually worth $88?
Short answer? Yes. Its price aligns with those premium golf polos, but does the heavy lifting of a luxury dress shirt. Essentially, one shirt seamlessly covers the 9 a.m. stand-up meeting and the 6 p.m. after-work drink without requiring a wardrobe change.
If you are building a new office rotation, two shirts clear the $150 free shipping threshold, and U.S. returns are completely free. On the brand’s site, the semi-spread polo averages a stellar 4.3 stars across nearly 2,000 reviews.
Which Collars & Co. polo should you buy first?
Baer doesn’t hesitate: the white Semi-Spread Collar Polo. “White is timeless. It works under just about everything: a navy quarter-zip, a gray cashmere sweater, a blazer or even a suit jacket.”
He calls the semi-spread the brand’s most versatile collar. “It has enough structure to look like a traditional dress shirt, but it’s slightly more understated than our English Spread,” he says. “It frames your face nicely, sits beautifully under a sweater and doesn’t look oversized when you’re wearing it on its own.”
“You can throw it under a navy quarter-zip with a great pair of trousers, and you look like you put a lot of thought into your outfit, even though it took you about 30 seconds,” Baer adds. “If you’re building a new office wardrobe, that’s where I’d start. Then I’d add light blue and a subtle pattern.”
Start with white, add light blue to clear the free shipping line, and find out firsthand why two groups of guys who used to agree on absolutely nothing are now wearing the exact same shirt to work.
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