Shirt

Charvet shirt from the 1930s, Norsk Folkemeuseum, Oslo

A shirt is a cloth garment for the upper body.

Originally an undergarment worn exclusively by men and women it has become, in American English, a catch-all term for a broad variety of upper-body garments and undergarments. In British English, a shirt is more specifically a garment with a collar, sleeves with cuffs, and a full vertical opening with buttons or snaps (North Americans would call that a "dress shirt", a specific type of "collared shirt"). A shirt can also be worn with a necktie under the shirt collar.

History

The world's oldest preserved garment, discovered by Flinders Petrie, is a "highly sophisticated" linen shirt from a First Dynasty Egyptian tomb at Tarkan, c. 3000 BC: "the shoulders and sleeves have been finely pleated to give form-fitting trimness while allowing the wearer room to move. The small fringe formed during weaving along one edge of the cloth has been placed by the designer to decorate the neck opening and side seam."[1]

The shirt was an item of men's underwear until the twentieth century.[2] Although the woman's chemise was a closely related garment to the man's, it is the man's garment that became the modern shirt.[3] In the Middle Ages, it was a plain, undyed garment worn next to the skin and under regular garments. In medieval artworks, the shirt is only visible (uncovered) on humble characters, such as shepherds, prisoners, and penitents.[4] In the seventeenth century, men's shirts were allowed to show, with much the same erotic import as visible underwear today.[5] In the eighteenth century, instead of underpants, men "relied on the long tails of shirts ... to serve the function of drawers.[6] Eighteenth-century costume historian Joseph Strutt believed that men who did not wear shirts to bed were indecent.[7] Even as late as 1879, a visible shirt with nothing over it was considered improper.[2]

The shirt sometimes had frills at the neck or cuffs. In the sixteenth century, men's shirts often had embroidery, and sometimes frills or lace at the neck and cuffs and through the eighteenth century long neck frills, or jabots, were fashionable.[8][9] Coloured shirts began to appear in the early nineteenth century, as can be seen in the paintings of George Caleb Bingham. They were considered casual wear, for lower-class workers only, until the twentieth century. For a gentleman, "to wear a sky-blue shirt was unthinkable in 1860 but had become standard by 1920 and, in 1980, constituted the most commonplace event."[10]

European and American women began wearing shirts in 1860, when the Garibaldi shirt, a red shirt as worn by the freedom fighters under Giuseppe Garibaldi, was popularized by Empress Eugénie of France.[11][12] At the end of the nineteenth century, the Century Dictionary described an ordinary shirt as "of cotton, with linen bosom, wristbands and cuffs prepared for stiffening with starch, the collar and wristbands being usually separate and adjustable".

Types

Three types of shirt

Parts of shirt

Many terms are used to describe and differentiate types of shirts (and upper-body garments in general) and their construction. The smallest differences may have significance to a cultural or occupational group. Recently, (late twentieth century) it has become common to use tops to carry messages or advertising. Many of these distinctions apply to other upper-body garments, such as coats and sweaters.

Shoulders and arms

Sleeves

Main article: sleeves

Shirts may:

Cuffs

Main article: cuff

Shirts with long sleeves may further be distinguished by the cuffs:

Lower hem

Body

Neck

Other features

Some combinations are not applicable, e.g. a tube top cannot have a collar.

Types of fabric

There are two main categories of fibres used: natural fibre and man-made fibre (synthetics or petroleum based). Some natural fibres are linen, the first used historically, hemp, cotton, the most used, ramie, wool, silk and more recently bamboo or soya. Some synthetic fibres are polyester, tencel, viscose, etc. Polyester mixed with cotton (poly-cotton) is often used. Fabrics for shirts are called shirtings. The four main weaves for shirtings are plain weave, oxford, twill and satin. Broadcloth, poplin and end-on-end are variations of the plain weave. After weaving, finishing can be applied to the fabric.

Shirts and politics

In the 1920s and 1930s, fascists wore different coloured shirts:

In addition, red shirts have been used to symbolize a variety of different political groups, including Garibaldi's Italian revolutionaries, nineteenth century American street gangs, and socialist militias in Spain and Mexico during the 1930s.

In the UK, the Social Credit movement of the thirties wore green shirts.

Industrial production

See also

References

  1. ↑ Barber, Elizabeth Wayland (1994). Women's Work. The first 20,000 Years, p.135.Norton & Company, New York. ISBN 0-393-31348-4
  2. 1 2 William L. Brown III, "Some Thoughts on Men's Shirts in America, 1750-1900", Thomas Publications, Gettysburg, PA 1999. ISBN 1-57747-048-6, p. 7
  3. ↑ Dorothy K. Burnham, "Cut My Cote", Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario 1973. ISBN 0-88854-046-9, p. 14
  4. ↑ C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington, The History of Underclothes, Dover Publications Inc., New York 1992. ISBN 0-486-27124-2 pp. 23–25
  5. ↑ C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington, The History of Underclothes, Dover Publications Inc., New York 1992. ISBN 0-486-27124-2 pp. 54
  6. ↑ Linda Baumgarten, "What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America", The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia, in association with the Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut 2002, ISBN 0-300-09580-5, p. 27
  7. ↑ Linda Baumgarten, "What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America", The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia, in association with the Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut 2002, ISBN 0-300-09580-5, pp. 20-22
  8. ↑ C. Willet and Phillis Cunnington, "The History of Underclothes", Dover Publications Inc., New York 1992. ISBN 0-486-27124-2 pp. 36–39
  9. ↑ C. Willet and Phillis Cunnington, "The History of Underclothes", Dover Publications Inc., New York 1992. ISBN 0-486-27124-2 pp. 73
  10. ↑ Michel Pastoureau and Jody Gladding (translator), "The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes", Columbia University Press, New York 2001 ISBN 0-7434-5326-3, p. 65
  11. ↑ Anne Buck, "Victorian Costume", Ruth Bean Publishers, Carlton, Bedford, England 1984. ISBN 0-903585-17-0
  12. ↑ Young, Julia Ditto, "The Rise of the Shirt Waist", Good Housekeeping, May 1902, pp. 354–357
  13. ↑ For example, see Laura I. Baldt, A.M., Clothing for Women: Selection, Design and Construction, J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, PA 1924 (second edition), p. 312

External links

Look up shirt in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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