Men’s shirts remained fairly constant during the eighteenth century. All fabric was hand spun and hand woven, and shirts were cut to make maximum use of the linen in a series of squares and rectangles. The construction is both genius and practical. Shirts were the main undergarment for men and were made of linen; fine linen for the wealthy, coarser for the poor. Shirts were frequently laundered and were constructed with reinforcement of the shoulders, which received much of the wearing stress.

Fabric

This shirt was made from the ILO20 bleached linen from fabrics-store.com, and sewn using cotton thread (fine linen thread being difficult for me to obtain here in rural Australia.)

Construction:

I used several blogs and books to work out how to make the shirt. They were each a little different, which is unsurprising given that these shirts were ubiquitous during the eighteenth century, made by millions of different people, and each would have had their own ways and preferences.

I mostly relied on Alexa Bender’s translation and explanation of Garsault’s L’art du tailleur, published in the 1760s. Kelly Lock’s blog posts at Tea in a Teacup were also helpful, and I found handy diagrams particularly of the neck gussets and shoulder reinforcements at The Woodsrunners Diary.

The shirt is entirely hand-stitched and all seams are either flat-felled or otherwise enclosed.

Resources:

Baumgarten, Linda & Watson, John, Costume Close-Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern 1750-1790

Cunnington, C. Willet and Phillis, The History of Underclothes

Garsault  L’art du tailleur, translated and explained by Alexa Bender http://www.marquise.de/en/1700/howto/maenner/18hemd.shtml

Lock, Kelly, ‘How to make an 18th century shirt’ blog posts at https://teainateacup.wordpress.com/tag/how-to-make-an-18th-century-shirt/

Wright, Merideth, Everyday Dress of Rural America