Shirt

A shirt is a piece of cloth worn on the upper body, covering from the neck to the waist. It was first used as an undergarment and only by men, but today the term in American English covers many kinds of tops and undergarments. In British English, the word more narrowly refers to a garment that has a collar, cuffed sleeves, and a full front opening fastened with buttons or snaps—what North Americans would call a dress shirt. A necktie can be worn under the shirt's collar.

The oldest known preserved garment in the world is a linen shirt from an Egyptian tomb at Tarkan, dating to around 3000 BC. Discovered by Flinders Petrie, it is described as highly sophisticated, with finely pleated shoulders and sleeves for a trim fit and freedom of movement, and a small fringe placed to decorate the neck opening and side seam.

Until the twentieth century, the shirt was exclusively male underwear. Though the women's chemise was similar, it was the men's garment that evolved into the modern shirt. In the Middle Ages, shirts were plain and undyed, worn next to the skin beneath outer clothes. In medieval art, only humble figures like shepherds, prisoners, and penitents are shown with their shirts visible. By the seventeenth century, men began to show their shirts in public, carrying a similar erotic charge as visible underwear does today. In the eighteenth century, men did not wear underpants but relied on long shirt tails to serve that purpose. Historian Joseph Strutt considered it indecent for a man to sleep without a shirt. Even as late as 1879, wearing a shirt without anything over it was seen as improper.

Shirts sometimes had frills at the neck or cuffs. In the sixteenth century, embroidery was common, and frills or lace appeared at the neck and cuffs. Long neck frills called jabots were fashionable through the eighteenth century. Colored shirts emerged in the early nineteenth century, as seen in paintings by George Caleb Bingham, but were considered casual wear for lower-class workers only until the twentieth century. For a gentleman, wearing a sky-blue shirt was unthinkable in 1860, but by 1920 it had become standard, and by 1980 it was completely ordinary.

Women in Europe and America began wearing shirts in 1860, when the red Garibaldi shirt—worn by Giuseppe Garibaldi's freedom fighters—was popularized by Empress Eugénie of France. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Century Dictionary described an ordinary shirt as made of cotton, with a linen bosom, wristbands, and cuffs prepared for starching, and with separate, adjustable collars and wristbands.

The phrase "to give the shirt off one's back" first appeared in 1771, describing extreme desperation or generosity, and is still used today. In 1827, Hannah Montague, a housewife in upstate New York, invented the detachable collar. Tired of washing her husband's whole shirt when only the collar was dirty, she cut off his collars and found a way to attach them to the neckband after washing. Collar stays did not become popular until the 1930s; early versions looked more like tie clips than modern stiffeners and connected the collar points to the necktie.

Types of shirts include the Aloha shirt; the camp shirt, which is loose, straight-cut, short-sleeved, with a simple placket front and camp collar; the dress shirt, with a formal collar, full front opening, and cuffed sleeves; the white shirt, a dress shirt that is white; the dinner shirt, made for male evening wear like black or white tie; the guayabera, an embroidered dress shirt with four pockets; the poet shirt, loose-fitting with full bishop sleeves and large frills on the front and cuffs; the T-shirt, a casual, collarless, buttonless shirt made of stretchy knit fabric, usually cotton and short-sleeved, originally an undergarment but now everyday wear; the long-sleeved T-shirt; the ringer T-shirt, with a separate piece of fabric sewn onto the collar and sleeve hems; the raglan T-shirt, with raglan sleeves that extend in one piece to the collar; the halfshirt, a high-hemmed T-shirt falling between the bottom of the sternum and navel; the sleeveless shirt, also called a tank top; the A-shirt, vest, or singlet, with large armholes and neck hole, often worn by laborers or athletes; the camisole, a woman's undershirt with narrow straps, also worn alone; the polo shirt, a pullover with a soft collar, short sleeves, and an abbreviated button placket at the neck, with a longer back than front; the rugby shirt, a long-sleeved polo shirt traditionally of rugged construction; the Henley shirt, a collarless polo shirt; the baseball shirt or jersey, usually with three-quarter sleeves, team insignia, and a flat waist seam; and the sweatshirt, a long-sleeved athletic shirt of heavier material.