Victorian Men's Shirts: Masterpost

Victorian menswear was my start in loving historic fashions - I love the tension between their stiffness and grace. This is a research collection about the shirt in the Victorian period. I am not a trained historian, tailor or costumier - my masterposts are my research notes for garments I hope to make, in case they help future makers find their feet. This is also the first masterpost where I've tried to do original research: with extant garments, fashion plates, and pattern books from the period, instead of just relying on blog posts written by others. To a large extent, this is because there are so few online resources for: menswear generally, historic menswear, and especially, Victorian shirts.

My interest here is on late/high Victorian shirts for middle/upper class chaps, but I've included images from the earlier and later to show development, and discovered something very cool about late Victorian working men's clothes too. Think of this as a jumping off point for researching the exact period you're into.

Early shirts were basically an underwear. Like a woman's chemise, the goal was to protect expensive and hard-to-wash garments from the skin. Because of this, resources are few and far between vs resources for fancy garments like trousers and jackets. In short, a Victorian shirt is not yet the statement garment we see today. Georgian and Regency gentlemen would not show their shirt sleeves. The same is sort-of true of Victorian chaps, but here too we see the beginning of the modern shirt - more shaping, a closer fit, and some of the stiff/crispness we see today, design details making it more of a piece in its own right. 

General Notes

0. You can absolutely get away with a regular men's shirt for your first Victorian costume, especially if you
Shirt from Darcy Clothing, reproduction 
menswear store. This back has been 
dramatically gathered into the yoke.
 keep you jacket on as any gentleman should.

1. Victorian shirts have a much looser fit than the modern fashion. Which makes sense: fabric was still expensive, so larger shirts allow for more size changes and adjustments (my local haberdasher doesn't even stock shirting fabrics, on the basis that they are so cheap from Primark there is no interest in making them! Just chuck them out when they don't fit and buy a new one!)

2. Victorian sleeves are gathered into the cuff and sleeve - but are less billowy than a Regency pirate/poet shirt. Modern shirts have a fitted sleeve and cuff. Victorian cuffs were not frilly. Sorry.

3. Modern shirts generally conform to the body, and nicely tailored ones have a smaller armscye, so that they do not pull away from the skin when you move your arms. Victorian men would be wearing a properly fitted waistcoat over the shirt, which would have the same effect, allowing for a more generous shirt sleeve and cut.

4. Victorian backs are gathered into the yoke, where modern shirts use a few neat pleats or darts for a sleeker, less sack-like finish. Other Victorian shirts have no yoke, and are have gathered sacklike backs.

5. Victorian shirts often have a separate collar, attached by studs.
"Detachable starched collars became commonly worn on men's shirts around 1850. The idea was to present a clean appearance to the world without the expense of laundering the whole shirt. As the century progressed collars rose and fell in height according to the fashion of the time reaching their most extreme height in the Edwardian era at the very beginning of C20th." (source)
5. Through the Vic period, you see shirts gradually transition from the big billow to a fully fitted modern shirt; the age of the shirt/film/pattern will therefore show all sorts of variety in design. Shirts were fairly cheap and easy to manufacture at home, which also causes variety.

6. If you are researching historic menswear, be warned. Shirt-making is generally NOT seen as "tailoring" but underwear, haberdashery or general outfitting. This is to say: it's hard work to find pattern cutting books with shirt patterns in them, most focus only on outerwear.

7. You place a gusset at the base of the side seam. Lower hems are typically curved, not square.

8. The cuffs, collar and front would be starched. Often, these parts would be made from a nicer fabric as they would be visible. Cuffs would poke out around half an inch from the jacket sleeve - subtle, but present.

9. Victorian shirts would fit over the head, only opening as far as the waist

Originals from the Met

America/late 19th c/linen.Check out that hip curve: we will see it on patterns below. Note, no collar: just a place for collars to be attached.



America/1870s/linen. Check the link for a better image quality. Note the sleeves gathered into cuffs - but not at the armscye - and the rectangular front which would have been starched; the way the shirt gathers around the front. Seems to have a gusset on the end of the side seam, leaving the bottom of the seams unsewn. This is a typical shirt feature, I think I can see it on all of these.


American or European/1880/ cotton - again, sleeves gathered at top and bottom; a rectangular front, with the shirt gathered into it; a seam gusset. This seems to have a collar, but I THINK you actually add a collar on top of this with a stud, and then this fabric protects the collar from neck ick.


American/1860/linen - an evening shirt. Front rectangle is elegantly pleated. You can see gathering at both ends of sleeve, but it is subtle - perhaps because this is formalwear, and therefore more expensive/made for a classier client/can afford to be tailored more precisely.

Fashion Plates & Photos

From Siam CostumesNote that these plates are advertising the WAISTCOAT rather than the shirt. The shirt is, as I have said, not yet a statement piece in its own right. Shirts were of such little interest that you don't see shirt sleeves period on fashion plates pre 1890. Why would you? Shirts were not, in any meaningful sense, a form of fashion.


Note: many gathers at cuff and some at shoulder seam, which is sat on the shoulder, and a general looseness to the sleeve.

The only fashion elements of the shirt were collar, and shirt front. One would vary collar styles by occasion and fashion; and detatchable collars enabled you to reuse the same shirt, keep up with new styles, and easily replace that visible portion as they wore out or went gray without the expense of a new shirt. Similarly, shirt fronts were often revealed by waistcoats. They could be cut from a different fabric, and were sometimes worn separately. They were often starched, but not always (see the Cutter's Practical Guide below for notes on the transition to soft front shirts). Depending on period, it was sometimes fashionable for that area to be pleated or embellished.

In short: only the shirt front and collar would be seen, and thus, these were the fashionable focus. You can check out Siam Costume's wonderful collection of plates if you want to look at front and collar styles in more detail.
Decorated shirt fronts - date unsure - vs a 1890s smooth starched front on eveningwear.
Note how far it was fashionable for your cuff to peep.
Photos are similarly hard to come by, but here are two photos of working men demonstrating how rules of fashion and etiquette are always socially bound. They wore whatever was comfortable and practical for blacksmithing. Note that all three men are still wearing waistcoats though!


And check out this 1890s men's catalogue - images of collar and shirt options, as well as some veryvery fancy shirt fabrics.

Patterns

Modern shirt block


Here is the starting point for a modern man's shirt as a comparison point. Note that the measurements at chest, hip and waist are identical. For a fitted finish, you might add a curve along the side-seam line to curve closer to the waist, or adjust for a large belly etc but your basic garment is a rectangle. The sleeve is more or less symmetrical, with a high sleeve cap.

Victorian shirts have a distinctive wide hip flare and curved lower hem, and larger, flatter sleeves.


1907 Sack Shirt draft. 

Full pattern at Tudor LinksThis was the first pattern I found and commented on, so I'll leave it as the first so later comments make sense, after which we shall proceed by decade. 

Technically Edwardian, but far looser than many of the Victorian patterns - you could think of it as the final exaggeration of the style. Compare to modern shirt drafts, which are rectangular. And check out my intuitive hunch that older shirts will look good on me: that flare to the left is essentially a full hip adjustment, flaring 2 units wider than the chest. 

The sleeve too is far broader and flatter-capped than a modern one would be: it must be gathered. The "sack" was a fashionable style of coat throughout the late Victorian/early Edwardian era, named for its fit - which sounds unflattering, but apparently that was quite the thing.

1857 America - Lady Godey's Book

From Victoriana, where there are instructions.

I've added some pink lines to help you figure out where the pieces go, but in short this garment is weird and the pattern/instructions are useless.

Check out the flat sleeve cap and wide sleeve shape. 

Many Victorian shirts have a separate-cut front, which can be embellished or made from a more classy fabric. Check out the shoulder binder - which, I guess, reinforces the strength of the armscye and helps the shirt last longer. No pattern for the back, so presumably it's identical to the front? Or perhaps some of the diagram is missing, but given the overlapping here that doesn't seem likely.

This shirt is rectangular. Such shirts are easiest to cut and assemble - on which more below - and make sense for a home magazine like Lady Godey's. No idea how representative this is.

1869 London - Cassell's Household Guide vol 3

From Internet Archive. This book is an Enquire Within Upon Everything/Mrs Beeton style guidebook to cooking, DIY, etiquette and household management. The intended audience is a home seamstress. It declares that many are put off making shirts because they view it as difficult - but it is easy if you know how. Not with these instructions, buddy! 

Still, one could attempt to make the shirt (pg 328 onwards). There are several diagrams, and for history focused bros, a lot of contextual information on culture and style (apparently, fashionable young men liked a more fitted waist as they do now).

Back of the shirt is slightly longer than the front. This seems to be a fairly common feature.

1873 New York - Glencross

From the Internet Archive. This plate shows both a shirt and pants. Note the familiar curve, but the numbers indicate that the chest and hip measures are equal on this shirt.




1884 America - National Garment Cutter

At the Internet Archive. Running out of unique things to say about these shirts, save that this is another instruction book with a shirt and it seems easy to understand and make. Note the curved hem, the hip flare (3/4 inch wider than the chest), the inserted front.

1890 Illinois - Martin's Shirt Cutting System

Full book at Internet Archive. Here we also see the hip measurement is round, and wider than the chest measurement - although this garment is more fitted than the sack shirt. This book also shows a sleeve, which as above, has a very wide bicep line and a flat sleeve cap for gathering.

Like most of the IA scans, this is an American book from the Library of Congress - I'm not certain how shirtmaking styles across the world compare, and whether the US had unique fashions, trailed behind Europe, lead the way, or a combo of the three.  

Most of these shirts would have a gusset - a tiny triangle of extra fabric - attached to the side seam at about hip level, before that extreme curve. My partner tells me this is still pretty common on modern shirts, especially nice ones - but mid-range ones as well. This is a £40 ready to wear from M&S demonstrating both a gusset, and amazingly, curved hems. I wonder if a curved hem sits more nicely on the thigh, and prevents the shirt rumpling when your legs move:
Modern M&S shirt with a gusset. This feature is typical on Victorian and Regency shirts, to strengthen the seam.

1890s London - Cutter's Practical Guide (Underwear volume)

Bless this book, a rare old tome on shirt-making; and bless Costumer's Manifesto for uploading it and the Wayback Machine for saving it. If you're serious, read the whole thing - a measurement system, diagrams, and notes on fabric and making up. Their sack shirt is similar in style to the 1907 one - full hip, rounded shapes, and shown first due to simplicity. It then shows how to adapt the sack back shirt to include a yoke, more popular but also slightly more challenging. This book also contains a number of different fronts, notes on fabric and fit, collars and cuffs, and some bonkers sports drafts where the shirt loops around your leg to keep them in place. Plus aprons, bath robes, pajamas, smoking jackets, football shirts, boiler suits etc. In short, read the book in full - it's an essential resource. And as the author of this very book acknowledges in his introduction, books on shirtmaking were very rare - true in the 1890s, still true now.

I'm fascinated to learn what I would think of as a 1700-1830 pirate/poet shirt continued to be worn by working class British Victorians at least as late as 1890. It uses a Regency-style sleeve gusset to aid with movement, and the making up guide on pg 34 explains that - like your Regency garments - it was cut in squares so as to waste as little fabric as possible. It was made of "a good, grand drill or Harvard shirting, with 18 inches of strong grey calico lining both back and front". Historic garments are rarely lined due to the expense of fabric, so this lining must serve a practical purpose at preserving the garment during heavy work. This draft in particular has the most "modern" shape of those I have seen today.

Clearly, the easy construction + thrifty use of fabric + ease of movement made this garment such a winner, it remained in common use among working people at least 100 years after it strictly went out of fashion.


 The book also has a draft for a flannel undervest, as sported by Robert Downey Junior in Sherlock Holmes again here:


Fabrics and construction

The quickest answer here is: there is nothing new under the sun. Fabrics and construction methods for contemporary shirts are also good for historic ones. I would choose a 100% linen or cotton, use flat fell seams and consult modern shirtmaking texts. White is safest, but check these mad lads out:


This is an American men's outfitting catalogue Fall/Winter 1894-95. I think there' s always a risk of flattening the past into our perceptions. The Victorians, who esteemed elegant white marble statues from Greece, had no idea that they were originally garish and painted. And us, who would naturally both assume white fabric and a dull/staid vibe from Victorian shirts. You rarely see anything else in films! Multicoloured polkadot cuffs in 1894? Well OK then. 

Gustave Caillebotte, 1877/8, check out em stripes!



Many of the books linked above have notes on fabric types; there's also this 1833 haberdasher's guide to different sorts of fabrics which you can use if you want to get geeky, and an 1888 dress etiquette guide which names appropriate fabrics and collars for each occasion (although as ever, mostly shirts are not the focus). The latter informs the reader that costliness of fabric is less important than style and appropriate choices; and suggests fancy pattern shirts are most appropriate for travel.

For me, I still don't have much interest in this: I can't tell with confidence between a cotton lawn, a cotton duck and a cotton drill, and am still a bit unsettled that there even are different kinds of cotton. Maclochlainn spends a lot of time talking in his tailoring book about how fabric words today meant different things in the past and the research he has done to discover this; and about British mills where you can acquire such fabrics. I definitley don't have the wisdom to do that. 

Some options I've seen mentioned include:
  • percale (from the catalogue above)
  • cambric
  • Oxford shirting
  • cotton
  • linen 
  • longcloth
  • "muslin 2000-linen" (the word 2000 maybe refers to thread count?)
  • "2100 linen" for collars and cuffs
  • flannel (sometimes for business shirts, 1888 onwards)
  • soft flannel (for lawn tennis shirts)
  • Dress shirt fronts: linen, pique/Marseilles
  • Working men's shirts: Oxford shirting, with shirt-front lined with unbleached calico
  • Working men's shirts: drill or Harvard shirting, lined with strong grey calico back and front
  • Day shirts: flannel, with shirt-front lined with the same or a thinner flannel
  • White linen/cambric shirts - shirt front made of 4-5 layers of same to better take starch.
  • Attachable fronts: fine linen layer, then 2 heavy cotton canvas layers, then a common linen/calico at the back.
  • Collars/cuffs: fine linen on outside, layer(s) of stiffer fabric inside, akin to an interfacing.

You'll have to look at the texts yourself and do some investigating, to figure out the most appropriate fabric choices for your year and persona. 

Blogs

The Victorian Tailor has a series of posts on his process for making a shirt.

Period collection of free collar drafts for men and women.

Books

The landscape for books on menswear is lousy; historic menswear is worse; historic shirts, abysmal.

Unlike now, shirts were not really a design feature in their own right - they would not be seen, except collar and some of the front, and were really just an underwear. Victorian tailoring books focus on real tailored garments: trousers, waistcoats/vests, jackets, coats, capes.

GET:
Apparently the only work on the subject; out of print and accordingly pricey. I looked at the index to try and find some of the cutting guides used, but most are not online, or I didn't find the right search term.

DO NOT GET: 
  • The Victorian Tailorby Jason Maclochlainn, which contains nothing on shirts.
  • The Cut of Men's Clothes by Nora Waugh - again, zilch on shirts. Some brief comments on collars and cravats. 

Conclusion

Best wishes drafting and making Victorian shirts! In short, you can get away with a regular shirt if short on time - but making something with unique features like a starchable shirt front, a gathered sleeve and attachable collars will up your game. Good luck!

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