Famous Holywood Shirts

            

Shirt Phrases

• Keep one's shirt on - to keep cool and unruffled
• Put one's shirt on - to support another with the fullest confidence in his powers. (Also means to bet everything on a horse.)
• Shirt Tail - something small or a distant cousin
• Lose one's shirt - to lose everything
• Stuffed shirt - smug, conceited and usually pompous person
• Roll up your sleeves - to get to work
• Give you the shirt off his back - to be exceedingly generous

• Wear your heart on your sleeve - to be open about your feelings, (Shakespeare's Othello 1604). The original metaphor refers to feudal retainers wearing their lord's badge on their sleeves, to show whose followers they were, or to lovers wearing their mistress's scarf or handkerchief there. To the mediaeval mind, the sleeve was the natural place to display one's allegiance.

History of the Shirt

The earliest recording of this word is 1000 AD. A Shirt of Mail is armour composed of interlaced rings or chain-work or of fastened overlapping plates. This may be where the word shirt comes from.

The Shirt has been defined as an article of apparel, an undergarment for the upper part of the body, made of linen or hemp, more rarely cotton, flannel, silk, or some other washable material.

Originally it was a garment for both sexes worn next to the skin. However, it became more frequently applied to men's clothing and was often worn over an undershirt (later to become the t-shirt). As an over-shirt, it was invariably sleeved.

A Blouse is a light, loose upper garment, fitted to the waist by a belt; a form of bodice. This is different to the shirt in its heritage, design and fabric, but is often used to denote a woman's shirt.

Initially shirts were made at home either by the women of the house or to order. Although almost any linen or hemp cloth could be used, from 1604, there was a type of fabric called Shirting especially for the purpose. It was, and still is, a kind of stout cotton cloth suitable for hard wear.

Shirts were usually worn with a shirt band and fastened either with shirt string or with shirt buttons. A Shirt Band, on its own, denotes a neck band or collar to be worn with a shirt around the neck. In pairs, shirt bands go around the wrist and confine the sleeves of a shirt, now known as cuffs. Shirt bands were one of the small items of apparel that were obtainable ready made and are first recorded in 1532.

Ruffs, worn around the neck and wrists, were accessories to the shirt that came and went out of fashion, but had an interesting history of their own.

By 1600 complete ready made shirts were available in shops.

A Shirt String was used to lace up the front of a shirt. Shirt strings largely went out of use in the 1850's to be replaced by the shirt button, although they can still be seen today on smocks.

Shirt Buttons were probably made most frequently out of mother of pearl or bone to avoid the risk of staining the fabric when shirts were washed, which would have been a risk with metal buttons. The number of shirt buttons for sale suggests that making shirts at home remained common even when ready made ones were available in some shops. 

An alternative way to the shirt button or string for fastening a shirt was the Shirt Buckle. From an act of 1790, it appears they were frequently made of silver, presumably since other metals would have stained the fabric when washed. Early advertisements for shirt buckles in the newspapers suggest that they were fashion items with style.