Chemise

For the wall in fortification, see Chemise (wall).

Fashionable young men in early 16th century Germany showed a lot of fine linen in a studied negligence. This unidentified gentleman has a band of "smocking" round the collar of his shift. (Portrait by Ambrosius Holbein, 1518, at the Hermitage Museum)

The chemise, also called a smock or shift, is a simple garment worn next to the skin to protect clothing from sweat and body oils. Chemise is the French term. Italians called it a "camicia". The English called the same shirt a "smock" and the Irish called it a "léine" (pronounced LAY-nya).

The history of the chemise

The chemise seems to have been developed from the Roman tunica and first became popular in the European Middle Ages. Women wore shifts or chemises underneath their gowns or robes; men wore chemises with their trousers or braies, and covered the chemises with garments such as doublets, robes, etc. In those times, it was usually the only piece of clothing that was washed regularly.

In Western countries, women's shifts did not fall out of fashion until the early 20th century, when they were generally replaced by brassieres, panties, girdles, and full slips.

Men's chemises may be said to still survive, as the common shirt. However, the shirt is now an outer garment, and is often protected from skin oil and perspiration by an undershirt or T-shirt worn next to the skin. The chemise also morphed into the smock-frock, a garment worn by English laborers until the early 20th century. Its loose cut and wide sleeves were well adapted to heavy labor. The name smock is nowadays still used for military combat jackets in the UK, whereas in the Belgian army the term has been corrupted to smoke-vest.

Construction of the chemise

A chemise, shift, or smock was usually sewn at home, by the women of a household. It was assembled from rectangles and triangles cut from one piece of cloth so as to leave no waste. The poor would wear skimpy chemises pieced from a narrow piece of rough cloth; the rich might have voluminous chemises pieced from thin, smooth fine linen.

See also

• Lingerie
• Undergarments
• Hosiery

References

• Cut My Cote, by Dorothy Burnham, Royal Ontario Museum, 1973. A survey of shirt patterns over the ages, with diagrams.

• "A Plain Linen Shift: Plain Sewing Makes the Most of Your Fabric", by Kathleen R. Smith, Threads Magazine, Feb/Mar 1987.

External links

• La Couturière Parisienne Historical pictures and patterns.

Compare

• Camisards: after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a revolt by the guerilla Protestant "Camisards" (Occitan camisa, 'smock' or 'shirtsleeves') broke out in 1702, in the rugged and isolated Cevennes region of south-central France.