Shirt

The world's oldest preserved garment, discovered by Flinders Petrie, is a "highly sophisticated" linen shirt from a First Dynasty Egyptian tomb at Tarkan, dated to 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 clothing that only men could wear as underwear, until the twentieth century.[2] Although the women's chemise was a closely related garment to the men's, it is the men'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".

The first documented appearance of the expression "To give the shirt off one's back", happened in 1771 as an idiom that indicates extreme desperation or generosity and is still in common usage. In 1827 Hannah Montague, a housewife in upstate New York, invents the detachable collar. Tired of constantly washing her husband's entire shirt when only the collar needed it, she cut off his collars and devised a way of attaching them to the neckband after washing. It was not until the 1930s that collar stays became popular, although these early accessories resembled tie clips more than the small collar stiffeners available today. They connected the collar points to the necktie, keeping them in place.[13]

Three types of shirt

• Camp shirt – a loose, straight-cut, short sleeved shirt or blouse with a simple placket front-opening and a "camp collar".
• Dress shirt – shirt with a formal (somewhat stiff) collar, a full-length opening at the front from the collar to the hem (usually buttoned), and sleeves with cuffs
• White shirt – usually dress shirt which is white in colour
  • Dinner shirt – a shirt specifically made to be worn with male evening wear, e.g. a black tie or white tie.
  • Guayabera – an embroidered dress shirt with four pockets.
• Poet shirt – a loose-fitting shirt or blouse with full bishop sleeves, usually with large frills on the front and on the cuffs.
• T-shirt – also "tee shirt", a casual shirt without a collar or buttons, made of a stretchy, finely knit fabric, usually cotton, and usually short-sleeved. Originally worn under other shirts, it is now a common shirt for everyday wear in some countries.[14]
  • Long-sleeved T-shirt – a T-shirt with long sleeves that extend to cover the arms.
  • Ringer T-shirt – tee with a separate piece of fabric sewn on as the collar and sleeve hems.
  • Raglan T-shirt – a T-shirt with a raglan sleeve; a sleeve that extends in one piece fully to the collar, leaving a diagonal seam from underarm to collarbone.
  • Halfshirt – a high-hemmed T-shirt
  • Sleeveless shirt – a shirt manufactured without sleeves, or one whose sleeves have been cut off, also called a tank top
    • A-shirt or vest or singlet (in British English) – essentially a sleeveless shirt with large armholes and a large neck hole, often worn by labourers or athletes for increased movability.
    • Camisole – woman's undershirt with narrow straps, or a similar garment worn alone (often with bra). Also referred to as a cami, shelf top, spaghetti straps or strappy top
• Polo shirt (also tennis shirt or golf shirt) – a pullover soft collar short-sleeved shirt with an abbreviated button placket at the neck and a longer back than front (the "tennis tail").
  • Rugby shirt – a long-sleeved polo shirt, traditionally of rugged construction in thick cotton or wool, but often softer today
  • Henley shirt – a collarless polo shirt
• Baseball shirt (jersey) – usually distinguished by a three-quarters sleeve, team insignia, and flat waist seam
• Sweatshirt – long-sleeved athletic shirt of heavier material, with or without hood
• Tunic – primitive shirt, distinguished by two-piece construction. Initially a men's garment, is normally seen in modern times being worn by women
• Shirtwaist – historically (circa. 1890–1920) a woman's tailored shirt (also called a "tailored waist") cut like a man's dress shirt;[15] in contemporary usage, a woman's dress cut like a men's dress shirt to the waist, then extended into dress length at the bottom
• Nightshirt – often oversized, ruined or inexpensive light cloth undergarment shirt for sleeping.
• Halter top – a shoulderless, sleeveless garment for women. It is mechanically analogous to an apron with a string around the back of the neck and across the lower back holding it in place.
• Top shirt – a long-sleeved collarless polo shirt
• Heavy shirt – a shirt with the heavy size that covers up under the neck
• Onesie or diaper shirt – a shirt for infants which includes a long back that is wrapped between the legs and buttoned to the front of the shirt
• Tube top (in American English) or boob tube (in British English) – a shoulderless, sleeveless "tube" that wraps the torso not reaching higher than the armpit, staying in place by elasticity or by a single strap that is attached to the front of the tube
• Overshirt are a type of shirt that can be worn as jackets. It is worn over a shirt.
• Punishment shirts were special shirts made for the condemned, either those cursed supernaturally, such as the poisoned shirt that killed Creusa (daughter of Creon), the Shirt of Nessus used to kill Hercules, those used to execute people in ancient Rome, such as the Tunica molesta, and those used in church heresy trials, such as the Shirt of Flame, or the Sanbenito

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, into the twenty-first century) it has become common to use tops as a form of advertisement. Many of these distinctions apply to other upper-body garments, such as coats and sweaters.

The main measures for a jacket are:

• Shoulders
• Bust
• Waist
• Hip
• Sleeve
• Length, from the neck to the waist or hip.

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.

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

• Black shirts were used by the Italian fascists, and in Britain, Finland and Germany and Croatia.
• Brownshirts were worn by German Nazis of the SA.
• The Blueshirts was a fascist movement in Ireland and Canada, and the colour of the Portuguese Nacional Sindicalistas, the Spanish Falange Española, the French Solidarité Française, and the Chinese Blue Shirts Society.
• Green shirts were used in Hungary, Ireland, Romania, Brazil and Portugal.
• Camisas Doradas (golden shirts) were used in Mexico.
• Red shirts were worn by the racist and antisemitic Bulgarian Ratniks.
• Silver Shirts were worn in the United States of America.
• Grey shirts were worn by members of the Fatherland League in Norway.

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.

Different colored shirts signified the major opposing sides that featured prominently in the 2008 Thai political crisis, with red having been worn by the supporters of the populist People's Power Party (PPP), and yellow being worn by the supporters of the royalist and anti-Thaksin Shinawatra movement the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Each side is commonly referred to as the 'red shirts' and 'yellow shirts' respectively, though the later opponents of the later Thaksin supporting groups have largely ceased wearing yellow shirts to protest rallies.

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

The party leaders of Dravidar Kazhagam in India wear only black shirts to symbolise atheism.

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  Shirt production line
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  Factory sewing
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  Shirts on a conveyor
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  Shirts awaiting finishing
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  Kids shirts for quality checking
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  Manufacturer and buyer reviewing product
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  Dress shirt

• Cardigan (sweater)
• Descamisado
• Jermyn Street, home of the oldest English shirtmakers

Look up shirt in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shirts.

• "Introduction to 18th-century fashion". Fashion, Jewellery & Accessories. Victoria and Albert Museum. 25 January 2011.
• "Introduction to 19th-century fashion". Fashion, Jewellery & Accessories. Victoria and Albert Museum. 25 January 2011.