SHIRTS
HISTORY
The shirt is the most basic garment – a protective second skin. For untold centuries it was a loose
fitting tunic, invariably of linen, a cloth used in clothing for a least 10,000 years. As such it has
entered the human psyche. To lose the shirt off one’s back it to lose all; to wash one’s dirty linen in
public is to expose all.
Until comparatively recent advances in the growing and processing of cotton, linen provided by fgar
the most practical screen between outerwear and the secretions and sensitivities of the body. It is
pliant, soft, absorbent, hard-wearing, and it washes well. The ancient Egyptians reveled in it, and
after death were wrapped up in it.
Silk, by comparison, was too delicate and too expensive for all but a privileged few. In the colder
climates of northern Europe, some early shirts were made of wool, but wool does not pass the wash-
test well. Cotton, until well into the 19th century, was beneath contempt, considered useful only for
padding and stuffing.
The word shirt has been traced to an early Germanic word meaning short: the same toot that has
given us ‘skirt’. For most of its history, the shirt was a very basic T-shaped tunic made of cloth taken
straight from the loom and requiring no tailoring skills. Until the middle of the 19th century it was
made at home by hand, usually by the wife or some servant.
Size and fit were of no consequence-plenty of billowing linen was a proclamation of wealth – with the
sole proviso that it had to be of sufficient length to protect the neck and wrists from chafing on the
edges of the outer garments. Eureka: the collar and cuffs, peek-a-boo elements which gave the shirt
enticement value as the piece of underwear which exposed itself.
Fancy collars and cuffs were an inevitable development, leading in the Elizabethan age to the
extravagant excesses of the ruff. This vast, radiating neckband of linen trimmed with lace was
starched until it stuck out all around like a cartwheel. Ruffs were gradually allowed to collapse back
on the shoulders, but the crisp effect of starch upon linen would be returned to again and again.
Lace and ruffle were abandoned by the end of the 18th century, replaced by expanses of white linen
under the general supervision of Beau Brummell, whose motto was “fine linen, plenty of it , and
country washing”.
Simplicity was married to sophistication: the finer, the softer, the whiter the linen, the greater the
distinction. Since white linen shows up the slightest speck of dirt, it was a cruelly effective way of
excluding from social contention all but those rich enough, and idle enough, to be able to change
their shirts several times a day.
A compromise of sorts was found in the detached starched collar, which for a century held the new
professional classes in throttled thralldom. In one of these unverifiable stories which so decorate the
history of dress, a Mrs. Hannah Montague is a claimant to its invention. It seems that Mrs. Montague
so resented washing shirts that one morning in 1820 she snipped off her husband’s collars to
minimize the daily drudgery.
The tight starched collar, or choker, evolved in hundreds of styles, of which the wing collar, with
points folded back from the throat, was welcomed for at least offering some degree of relief. The
‘boiled shirt’ with wing collar was the only way to dress up properly. It had to be boiled to remove the
stiff starch of its front panel, hence the name.
The boiled shirt was, of course, of linen. Cotton shirting consisted only of cheap calicoes worn by
labourers, though through the latter part of the 19th century some striped cottons were seen at
recreational events. The double, or turned-down style of the modern collar began to come into use
in the second half of the 19th century, but only with casual clothes.
In 1900, an American shirt manufacturer tested the limits of sex appeal in starch when it created the
stiff-necked Arrow Collar Man as a hunk of male magnificence…”languorous of lid, the eyes piercing,
the chin noble, the mouth innocent, Overall, an air of clam”. The sales response to this marketing
ploy was phenomenal, but soft shirts were by now becoming available in variety in America. Another
American innovation about this time was the modern style of ‘coat’ shirt, which buttoned all the way
down the front and hence did not require to be pulled over the head.
Starch had become so associated with male dignity that it was hard to dispense with, but the Great
War generation had the starch knocked out of it in every sense, and in the new Prince of Wales it
found a style leader who was no stuffed shirt either. By the 1930s, the prince was wearing soft shirts
even with his dinner clothes.
Poplins and other cottons were now becoming really popular and shirts were coming with built-in
‘stiffeners’ to ease a gradual transition back to the soft attached collar.
F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the hedonism of the new freedom to self-indulge in this unparalleled
description from the great Gatsby:
“He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen
and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-
coloured disarray. While we admired, he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher- shirts
with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with
monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and
began to cry stormily. ‘They’re such beautiful shirts, she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ’
It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.’’
HISTORY
The shirt is the most basic garment – a protective second skin. For untold centuries it was a loose
fitting tunic, invariably of linen, a cloth used in clothing for a least 10,000 years. As such it has
entered the human psyche. To lose the shirt off one’s back it to lose all; to wash one’s dirty linen in
public is to expose all.
Until comparatively recent advances in the growing and processing of cotton, linen provided by fgar
the most practical screen between outerwear and the secretions and sensitivities of the body. It is
pliant, soft, absorbent, hard-wearing, and it washes well. The ancient Egyptians reveled in it, and
after death were wrapped up in it.
Silk, by comparison, was too delicate and too expensive for all but a privileged few. In the colder
climates of northern Europe, some early shirts were made of wool, but wool does not pass the wash-
test well. Cotton, until well into the 19th century, was beneath contempt, considered useful only for
padding and stuffing.
The word shirt has been traced to an early Germanic word meaning short: the same toot that has
given us ‘skirt’. For most of its history, the shirt was a very basic T-shaped tunic made of cloth taken
straight from the loom and requiring no tailoring skills. Until the middle of the 19th century it was
made at home by hand, usually by the wife or some servant.
Size and fit were of no consequence-plenty of billowing linen was a proclamation of wealth – with the
sole proviso that it had to be of sufficient length to protect the neck and wrists from chafing on the
edges of the outer garments. Eureka: the collar and cuffs, peek-a-boo elements which gave the shirt
enticement value as the piece of underwear which exposed itself.
Fancy collars and cuffs were an inevitable development, leading in the Elizabethan age to the
extravagant excesses of the ruff. This vast, radiating neckband of linen trimmed with lace was
starched until it stuck out all around like a cartwheel. Ruffs were gradually allowed to collapse back
on the shoulders, but the crisp effect of starch upon linen would be returned to again and again.
Lace and ruffle were abandoned by the end of the 18th century, replaced by expanses of white linen
under the general supervision of Beau Brummell, whose motto was “fine linen, plenty of it , and
country washing”.
Simplicity was married to sophistication: the finer, the softer, the whiter the linen, the greater the
distinction. Since white linen shows up the slightest speck of dirt, it was a cruelly effective way of
excluding from social contention all but those rich enough, and idle enough, to be able to change
their shirts several times a day.
A compromise of sorts was found in the detached starched collar, which for a century held the new
professional classes in throttled thralldom. In one of these unverifiable stories which so decorate the
history of dress, a Mrs. Hannah Montague is a claimant to its invention. It seems that Mrs. Montague
so resented washing shirts that one morning in 1820 she snipped off her husband’s collars to
minimize the daily drudgery.
The tight starched collar, or choker, evolved in hundreds of styles, of which the wing collar, with
points folded back from the throat, was welcomed for at least offering some degree of relief. The
‘boiled shirt’ with wing collar was the only way to dress up properly. It had to be boiled to remove the
stiff starch of its front panel, hence the name.
The boiled shirt was, of course, of linen. Cotton shirting consisted only of cheap calicoes worn by
labourers, though through the latter part of the 19th century some striped cottons were seen at
recreational events. The double, or turned-down style of the modern collar began to come into use
in the second half of the 19th century, but only with casual clothes.
In 1900, an American shirt manufacturer tested the limits of sex appeal in starch when it created the
stiff-necked Arrow Collar Man as a hunk of male magnificence…”languorous of lid, the eyes piercing,
the chin noble, the mouth innocent, Overall, an air of clam”. The sales response to this marketing
ploy was phenomenal, but soft shirts were by now becoming available in variety in America. Another
American innovation about this time was the modern style of ‘coat’ shirt, which buttoned all the way
down the front and hence did not require to be pulled over the head.
Starch had become so associated with male dignity that it was hard to dispense with, but the Great
War generation had the starch knocked out of it in every sense, and in the new Prince of Wales it
found a style leader who was no stuffed shirt either. By the 1930s, the prince was wearing soft shirts
even with his dinner clothes.
Poplins and other cottons were now becoming really popular and shirts were coming with built-in
‘stiffeners’ to ease a gradual transition back to the soft attached collar.
F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the hedonism of the new freedom to self-indulge in this unparalleled
description from the great Gatsby:
“He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen
and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-
coloured disarray. While we admired, he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher- shirts
with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with
monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and
began to cry stormily. ‘They’re such beautiful shirts, she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ’
It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.’’
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How to dress like a gentleman- A guide on the history of shirts: How to dress like a true gentleman
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