The world's oldest preserved garment, discovered by archaeologist Flinders Petrie, is a highly sophisticated linen shirt from a First Dynasty Egyptian tomb at Tarkan, dated to the 3rd millennium BCE. This ancient piece of clothing was not merely a covering but a testament to advanced textile engineering, featuring shoulders and sleeves that were finely pleated to provide a form-fitting trimness while simultaneously allowing the wearer room to move. The designer of this garment had placed the small fringe formed during weaving along one edge specifically to decorate the neck opening and side seam, proving that aesthetic consideration existed alongside functional necessity in the earliest days of human clothing. This linen shirt represents the genesis of a garment that would eventually evolve from a simple undergarment into a global symbol of status, politics, and identity.
Men's Underwear and The Visible Shirt
For centuries, the shirt was an item of clothing that only men could wear as underwear, remaining hidden beneath outer layers until the twentieth century. In the Middle Ages, it was a plain, undyed garment worn next to the skin and under regular garments, and in medieval artworks, the shirt is only visible on humble characters such as shepherds, prisoners, and penitents. By the seventeenth century, men's shirts were allowed to show, carrying much the same erotic import as visible underwear today, a stark contrast to the earlier era when a visible shirt with nothing over it was considered improper even as late as 1879. In the eighteenth century, men relied on the long tails of their shirts to serve the function of drawers, and costume historian Joseph Strutt believed that men who did not wear shirts to bed were indecent. The shirt was an item of clothing that only men could wear as underwear, until the twentieth century, marking a long history of the garment being a secret layer rather than a public statement.The Detachable Collar Revolution
In 1827, Hannah Montague, a housewife in upstate New York, invented the detachable collar, solving a domestic problem that had plagued families for generations. Tired of constantly washing her husband's entire shirt when only the collar needed it, she cut off his collars and devised a way of attaching them to the neckband after washing. This innovation changed the economics of laundry and the maintenance of men's wardrobes, though it was not until the 1930s that collar stays became popular, although these early accessories resembled tie clips more than the small collar stiffeners available today. They connected the collar points to the necktie, keeping them in place, and the first documented appearance of the expression