Grumpy Old Man Before You Judgeme Please Shirt

A slightly crumpled white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, an untied narrow black tie, skinny black pants and a jacket thrown over her shoulder: Patti Smith stares at the photographer in this portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, taken in 1975 and used on the cover of her debut album Horses. Although it is posed, the picture uses natural light and exudes a simplicity that is unusual in the music industry of the 1970s. The habitual codes of fashion, gender and music are muddled, and the white shirt plays a central role in this: timeless and androgynous, pure and absolute. Smith once remarked that the cover reminded her of the French poets Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, two important sources of inspiration for her at the time. But there is also something of the Balzac of 1842, caught on a Daguerreotype in this portrait: the same hand on the heart, right shoulder forward and the crumpled shirt that evokes in his portrait the activity of writing as work. The Horses cover, in short, concatenates references and associations that together would raise enough issues to write a history of the white shirt from the perspective of 1975. Fashion’s desire to go ‘back to basics’ periodically returns in times of crisis. Is it a surprise then that the white shirt, “the ultimate wardrobe staple” as magazine Elle called it in 2014, is currently enjoying a comeback, one of many? It is tempting to ask whether this might be a sign of conservatism? Or are there other reasons for this periodic return? And which values does it embody, what history does it rework

Grumpy Old Man Before You Judgeme Please Shirt

In its different incarnations throughout antiquity (the Egyptian kalasaris, the Greek chiton, the Roman tunica manicata) the shirt is a unisex undergarment. Over time it becomes gender-specific and more sophisticated. In the early sixteenth century, the shirt lengthens along the arms and the neck to create collars and cuffs, and these grow in importance and sophistication in the European Renaissance and the Dutch Golden Age. Until the nineteenth century, the shirt is mainly an undergarment, for men and women, and the fineness of the cotton along with the addition of lace trimmings, which are visible under dresses and suits, make it more precious. Whiteness denotes wealth, probity, and respectability, although these characteristics are somewhat challenged by Marie-Antoinette’s pioneering, in 1779, of what will quickly be called the ‘chemise à la reine’. Here, the undergarment becomes a simple cotton dress worn with a colourful silk sash around the waist, and a minimum of ruffles. It anticipates the neo-classical Empire style of clothing of the Napoleonic era and the white dresses that look back towards Roman antiquity. The chemise à la reine is an important garment in that it transgresses the boundaries of the private and the public, by turning underwear into outerwear.