"I don't understand it," designer Steven Alan says, trying to grasp why a twentysomething guy would want to look like circa-1970 Danny Bonaduce outside the confines of a theme party. "Are they wearing gold chains?"

They might as well be. Few manipulations of a shirt send as clear a message as the Big Man Collar. The half-tuck that had a moment a couple of years ago is a fairly obvious attempt to look rakish and nonchalant, but it's not shameless. Dangling French cuffs—arranged to hang, weary-royalty-style, below the sleeves of a jacket—are more conspicuous, and therefore more obnoxious. But a shirt with an extra-wide collar, unbuttoned at the top with the points splayed so that they extend toward the shoulders, is stunningly unsubtle. It's on the short list of style flourishes that shouldn't be attempted by the majority of the male population—right below gold chains. Nonetheless, it has recently been exhumed and co-opted by B- and C-list actors and the kinds of guys who consider hulking chronographs, extra-large cuff links, and velvet loafers to be indispensable accessories.

"I guess on a super-WASPy-looking guy it could work," Alan says. "On someone who reads "Connecticut" it could be kind of funny and tongue-in-cheek."

That's probably not what Hills star Heidi Montag's fiancé, Spencer Pratt—the blond, blue-eyed Machiavelli of reality TV—was thinking, if he was thinking anything, when he started flaring his collar out over his bankery pin-striped suits. Pratt probably thinks the look conveys confidence, wealth, and power. But like most affectations calculated to convey those attributes, the Big Man Collar does the exact opposite. Or worse, it telegraphs an association with a not so socially acceptable kind of wealth and power.

"The outside-the-jacket collar is a textbook example of trying too hard," says Vincent Boucher, an L.A. stylist who works with Kiefer Sutherland. "Maybe some of these guys think it's like a Rat Pack thing, but it isn't. It's sharky. In the movies, it's always the drug dealer who has his shirt collar like that."

"Only about 5 percent of men can pull it off," New York fashion designer Craig Robinson says. "If I did that, they wouldn't let me through the door at most clubs. I'd look like I was going to cause trouble."

Unfortunately, the Pratt and Connolly types who've been experimenting with the collar arrangement—in degrees ranging from Fred-from-Scooby-Doo to super-flared Saturday Night Fever—aren't capturing any of the bad-boy allure it has in certain contexts (see Johnny Depp). They're just proving that the Big Man Collar doesn't make guys look more important. It makes them look remarkably . . . small.