Jason's right IMO.

Fair point regarding what is required.

I deleted what I just wrote, blathering on about button-down collars blah-blah-blah. Ultimately the regular collar is correct in the historical sense. On casual shirts like chambray I like the look of button collars. It allows for a nice soft unlined collar but with the structure the button-collar provides. Its probably worth noting that the only chambray shirt I see regularily has a button collar, it just looks right to me.

Better?

I realised earlier that I should thank you. It occured to me that the little diatribe I wrote and then deleted, clarified my own thoughts on the OCBD and put my mind to rest about it.

Without this thread and probably more importantly your response to me, I wouldn't have offered the opportunity to collect my thoughts and put them to rest. Personal introspection is part of what keeps ones style (and oneself) in check and on course and ultimately content.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Any the wiser, young Mick?

I think I posted some Andover chams for inspiration.  Let me see if I can find them.  Slightly refined, but in BD or straight, I think they work with a blue suit. esp.  Or almost any color jacket.

Eleven years on and I wear denim shirts with a button-down collar.  Happily.  No problem whatever.
But why is chambray still so pricey on Ebay? 
It is, you know (US site). 
Denim - even USA made - is inexpensive.

There are several on Ebay Com I could be tempted by, some BD, others not.

I really like chambray.
I remember seeing it for the first time in the early to mid-eighties. I really didn't know what it was. Some sort of light denim?
It felt very cool and American, that you'd wear with cotton trousers (that I later found out were called chinos) and those expensive made in the USA slip ons (loafers).
It fell out of fashion for a while about 20 years ago when it was really difficult to get hold of over here.
On a trip to Florida I found a number of different  chambray shades and fits at a BB outlet store. The prices were so good the shirts just screamed to be smuggled back into the UK.

Sunday we visited our godchild, who got married in the summer, a wedding we couldn't attend. My wife dug out a 20 year old photo of me with her as a child. I couldn't believe it because I was wearing a BD chambray shirt, dark navy chinos and a pair of dark brown Sperry Top siders. I only remember the shoes! I like to think I have almost a photographic memory for clothes I have owned but I can't remember buying these.

Tieless I go.  Everywhere.

I've owned a few chambray shirts and have come to appreciate denim as something I can just fold away in a drawer.  I have a particularly pleasing USA-made Baggie that sees plenty of action.  Or, er, inaction as I spend a lot of time now reading, listening to music, watching our extensive collection of DVDs and posting rubbish on 'Talk Ivy'.  When teaching I moved from Ralph Lauren to more full-on Ivy, sometimes treating my students to a sight of the cotton Keydge jacket John Simons fitted me for at Russell Street.  'There, you look just like a modern jazz musician'.  Maybe Paul Desmond.