The shirts worn by our 18th century men were, by and large, made from square and rectangular pieces of fabric. Some interpreters refer to them as “box-frocks,” others call them box-shirts or square shirts.
When made of light weight material, they are worn as the first layer against the skin and so are also referred to as “body-shirts.” They are a general-purpose garment made of linen, hemp, cotton, wool or combination thereof. That being said, they are not poet-shirts! It is not their name; not by any means, way, shape or form. They are neither called poet shirts, nor do they have poet sleeves! To even write those words in tandem, makes me cringe. I believe the phrase comes from images of the stage upon which actors portraying the era of William Shakespeare are wearing a loose shirt with puffy sleeves. The sleeves can be puffy, yes, but that is because the cuffs are gathered into pleats NOT because a poet wears them. Can a poet wear such a shirt? Yes, he can. However, for every poet there are thousands of other men like: farmers, miners, smelters, carpenters, bodgers, furniture makers, book-binders, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, machinists, gunsmiths, hunters, soldiers, ship’s captains, boatmen, coopers, loggers, sawyers, brickmakers, masons, glass-blowers, broom-makers, tanners, paper makers, printers, teamsters, post-riders, millers, brewers, tavern keepers, servants, slaves, and a myriad of others including tailors, who, wear this style of shirt as an everyday garment for work, and dress, but NOT to recite poetry!
A better moniker for the sleeves is “scarecrow sleeves” or “scarecrow arms” because the sleeves are set into the shirt at a right angle to the line of the body of the shirt. Anyone who has made a scarecrow has attached a crossbar to an upright trunk and basically assembled a cross-shaped manikin which is then dressed. The arms are straight out, perpendicular to the upright post and hence parallel to the ground. The box-frock that is used to dress this simple affair will drape “squarely” on the arms, allowing the body will hang straight down.
The sleeves are generally the first thing that gets noticed with these shirts due to the voluminous appearance. The method of manufacture, therefore, begs the question, “Why are the sleeves so large?” The simple answer is: the fabric, which can be as wide as twenty-four inches (24”), is gathered into a width of nine or ten inches (9 or 10”). The cuffs are gathered by means of pleating. There can be as few as five pleats at the cuff for a small shirt or heavy fabric; but there can also be as many as ten pleats for a large shirt or one made from a light-weight fabric. Most of the body shirts I make of linen, hemp or cotton, have six or seven pleats at the cuff.
The shoulder area will generally contain from two to four smaller pleats, again, depending on the weight of the fabric.
At the armpit of the sleeve, is a square-cut gusset, folded into a triangle, which allows the straight sleeve and straight body to transition with an angle of 45 degrees.
The body or base of the shirt is traditionally made with one long rectangular piece of fabric. For my body (I stand 6’ tall) my shirt base is a minimum seventy-six inches (76”) long and at the maximum is eighty inches (80”) long. The fabric is then folded in half to provide a body of thirty-seven to forty inches, shoulder to tail.
The width of the fabric for the body, again for my body, is generally twenty-seven to twenty-eight inches (27”-28”) inches wide. This will provide a larger body that also gets noticed or referred to as “billowy” in its shape. The shoulder where the sleeves attach does not meet at the top of the shoulder, but rather two or more inches below the top of the shoulder.
This gives the shirt, to those who are unfamiliar with its construction, an optical illusion that the “yoke” of the body is somehow dropped at the shoulder. I can assure anyone who “thinks” that this is a method of tailoring that it is certainly NOT the case. There is no yoke on the body. There are, in a number of cases, straight pieces of fabric which are sewn to the top of the body either inside or outside, but these are generally referred to as epauletts. Their purpose is to relieve the stress at the shoulder due to, sweat and oils, the employment of straps on shooting bags, packs and haversacks and the wear they cause.
Not to beat a dead horse, but the popularization of a “drop-seam yoke” by artists and Hollywood is a purely romantic notion that is quite impractical. + As a young man, I tried to wear a number of shirts made this way and they are only comfortable IF your arms, especially the elbows, stay at your sides. The second the arms are raised up, the seam – which goes around the lower portion of the deltoid and above the bicep/tricep on the upper arm – will rub incessantly and become uncomfortable to the point of a rash or even a blister. Lastly, I have been approached by those, new to the history gatherings, who wish to make a “historical” shirt and ask about how the “yoke” is made? My reply is, “there is no yoke.” I showed them a properly made box frock and that usually ended the matter. There have been others who persisted, told me I was wrong, and that they were going to make a shirt like they had seen on TV. Needless to say, they did not last long, but that is another matter.
The collar area at the top, is cut with perpendicular lines into a “T” opening. Mine is generally eleven inches (11”) which means five and a half (5.5) on either side of (perpendicular to) the nine-inch slit running down the front.
The opening is rounded by means of two small gussets placed at the left and right side of the collar area. The Gussets make the opening more rounded and better suited to attaching a collar.
As for the slit mentioned it is generally nine inches, though some examples of French made shirts have extremely long slits of twelve to fourteen inches.
I have been making and wearing this style of shirt for thirty years. I prefer this style as a work shirt because it is comfortable and allows a full range of motion for my arms without tugging the tails of the shirt out of my pants or britches. I quit buying “commercial” work shirts over twenty-five years ago because they are poorly made, constrict my shoulders, hinder the motion of the arms and, even if they are termed “Long,” will eventually pull out at the waistline. Why, you might ask, are these historical shirts so different than those of today? The answers lie in the cut and fashion.
At this moment, go to your closet or chest of drawers and retrieve a modern button-down dress shirt or an “outdoor style” flannel shirt. Lay it flat on the table and notice that the sleeves are attached to the body at a 30-degree angle. If the sleeves are pulled out to a perpendicular angle from the body, the tension ends up in the armpit and the shoulder wrinkles and bunches up.
This style of shirt looks great if your arms are at your sides and your elbows are never raised above your chest. However, when performing jobs over your head, like the simple act of changing a light-bulb, it will constrict the shoulders, the cuffs pull away from the wrists and become constricted at the forearms; the armpit of the sleeve will tug at the body of the shirt, pull it from the waistline and expose the tails of the shirt, and now you are left with a drafty midsection.
Having seen, or at least referred to the tailored sleeve and body of the modern shirt, I have never understood the unwillingness of manufacturers of shirts to change the cut. I have seen endless racks of shirts in well-known chain stores across the nation, selling hunting clothes and all of them have the sleeve tailored at an angle (and usually a too-short of a body). Why? The duck-blind, deer stand, grouse woods, upland coverts, turkey woods, elk-haunts etc. etc. etc. are not fashion shows and yet the hunters are left with no choice but to purchase or go without. The only way to get past an ill-fitting modern shirt is to oversize. Hmmm. That would mean 1) a voluminous body and 2) larger arms. Maybe somebody, someday will catch on…maybe.
The box-frock on the other hand has sleeves which are already set into the body at a right angle and when the arms are raised there is virtually no tugging up at the body where the gussets attach. The sleeves are also longer and kept above the hand by means of the cuff.
My first brush with this manner of shirt occurred in 1979 when I came across a weaver who was making fabric for an “old-style shirt,” The origins of the shirt did not seem relevant until I remembered that she may have even used the term “peasant shirt,” because the fabric was heavy and slubby. At the time I was nineteen and had made about a dozen shirts (courtesy of my mother’s tutelage, (she had two boys, who else was she going to teach?)). I asked the weaver whether the woven fabric was going to be cut into the basic shape of a modern shirt. She gasped, looked up at me and said, “Heavens no! I will simply sew the parts of the shirt together by the bound selvage.” She then went on to show me the “T” which she had purposefully woven into the middle of the shirt and had kept it tied in several places to preserve the straight, flat pull of the loom free of wrinkles or sags. She had also woven several more pieces for the arms, collar, cuffs and gussets.
Her approach seemed to me, at the time, of little relevance. She was adamant that she would not cut the fabric but follow the “original pattern.” It seemed like a minor difference, even though I knew at the time that every square inch of hand-woven fabric was hard-fought-for material. Indeed, it would be hard to bring a pair of sheers to the fabric after putting so much time into the weaving. Anyone who has made a coat out of an expensive woolen blanket, will understand.
I would continue to make shirts using a pattern that I had modified to bring the cut of the sleeves to about a 70-degree angle to the body. The shirts included several of buckskin but also another six or so of heavy cotton. They were not truly scarecrow sleeves, but I had learned by that point, if I wanted the shirt to be more comfortable, I needed to maintain that angle. I knew the straighter the attachment of the sleeve was, the more motion I would gain. My problem was; however, I just could not seem to let go of the modern 20th century mentality as to the “proper” shape of a sleeve. I thought I had to have that angle, otherwise it would not look right.
By the end of the 1980’s a few folks in our black powder group had become involved in historical research and through those connections I had been introduced to some good historical interpreters. Several of those interpreters were wearing shirts made in the box-frock fashion. I could see they were different and I began to ask about the pattern. I learned in short order that there was no real “pattern” but rather a set of measurements, marks and cuts made on the fabric which is generally laid out flat on the floor. Slowly and inevitably, the images of the weaver woman from eleven years prior, came to mind again. Her comments about construction now made a lot of sense and I wanted to give the idea a try.
I used some slubby linen-cotton twist fabric and made my first box-frock in the summer of 1990, followed by another that autumn. Those shirts were everything I had hoped they would be and I wore them until I had sewn patches upon patches. Eventually they succumbed to the wear and tear of use and the sweat and oils from my skin and simply fell apart. To further patch the holes was futile and would “only make the rent worse.”
I began to clear our property for a building site, six years later. I started by building the garage, then my wife’s studio and finally the house. In the early stages, I wore the modern work shirts I had on hand, and as they wore-out I did not replace them with store-bought shirts, but instead began to wear the box frocks and found them preferable. By the time I started on clearing the site for the house in 1998 I had used up all the modern work shirts. They became tinder to start fires in the wood stove and that was the last of them.
I still occasionally wear modern store-bought shirts when I go to town. When appearing in court I still wear the button-down dress shirt and tie. It seems District Court Judges have little if any humor for an attorney wearing historical shirts, even with a tie and suit coat. Some conventions are set in stone and are not worth being challenged.
The humorous take-away; however, is that our children will ask me if I am going to town, but only when I am wearing a modern store-bought shirt, knit shirt or T-shirt. If on the other hand I am wearing a box-frock, they pay little attention to my activities; because, they assume I am will be working at home, which could be inside or outside.
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