Shirt width and soft collars

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

Are there differences in shirts from, say, the thirties vs. the forties in how spacious a shirt is? Did close-fitting suits go with close-fitting shirts, and later baggy suits with ample shirts?

 

[Baron Kurtz]

afraid all i can compare are 30s/40s and 70s. The 30s/40s shirts i have are quite roomy in the chest and waist and are not fitted at all. The only shirts i have that are fitted are 70s polycotton "disco"-type shirts.

bk

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

That matches my layman's opinion or imagination, too. I remember that my father's bespoke (or MTM?) shirts from the seventies were rather fitted as well, and they were regular dress shirts, not disco-style.

When did crisp collars come to be fashionable? Today, you mostly get softer collars with informal shirts, often button-down.

 

[herringbonekid]

most dress shirts of the 30s and 40s are not close fitting as they weren't meant to be seen outside of a jacket. i have many 40s european shirts and they are cut straight down the sides....as if they weren't bothered about how the body looked at all. fitted shirts would have arrived with sportswear of the 30s....shirts made to be seen in summer. but even then they're not fitted compared to the 60s and 70s and are more 'drapey'...think 40s gabardines.

crisp collars have always been around for dress shirts and go back to stiff starched collars of victorian times. starch was replaced by a plastic stiffener inserted into the collar.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Dress shirts from the '30s are roomy enough, but they do have high armholes.

(This makes perfect sense, as the suit jackets had high armholes too.
Imagine how uncomfortable a low armhole shirt would be, if worn under a high armhole jacket!)


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[Marc Chevalier]

Once in a blue moon, you can find a 1930s fitted dress shirt.

Take a look at the one below. The patent date indicates that it's from 1938. The shirt's back has columns of verticle darts running from the shoulder seams nearly to the bottom of the tail. These darts give the shirt an "hourglass" body shape.

 

[Sefton]

I love those long pointy collars on 30s shirts. I wish someone would bring that back...

 

[Tomasso]

. The shirt's back has columns of vertical darts running from the shoulder seams nearly to the bottom of the tail. These darts give the shirt an "hourglass" body shape.

I've never seen any thing like this before, very unique. Was it an effective tailoring technique?

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

Very interesting.

Concerning the collars, I'm aware of starched Victorian collars and later on banded and wingtip collars. Also the turned-down roundish collars of the twenties. But I wonder about the regular turned-down, more or less long, more or less pronouncedly pointed collars, like the one in Marc's picture above. Somehow I don't see them in the thirties like today's, i. e. starched, of a harder material. The effect of a hard collar is different from one of a soft collar even with an inlay, I find.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I've never seen any thing like this before, very unique. Was it an effective tailoring technique?

I think so. I have two of these shirts, and my friends Ben and Nathan have several more. (The shirts all came from one estate.) They really do follow the contours of one's body. And the design itself was patented (by James Oviatt, the L.A. haberdasher.)

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