In clothing for men, a dickey (also dickie and dicky, and tuxedo front in the U.S.) is a type of shirtfront that is worn with black tie (tuxedo) and with white tie evening clothes. [1] The dickey is usually attached to the shirt collar and then tucked into the waistcoat or cummerbund. Some dickey designs have a trouser-button tab, meant to secure the dickey-bottom to the waistband of the trousers, and so prevent the dickey from becoming untucked.
Originally called the detachable bosom, the dickey shirtfront, made of rigid plastic, was the fashion in shirts in the late 19th century; the dickey also was one of the first successful, commercial applications of celluloid. Like the detachable shirt collar, the dickey (a bosom-front for a dress shirt) was invented as a separate accessory for the shirt, which thus could be washed, starched, and pressed more readily than could be laundered if the dickey were an integral part of the shirt.
Among dandies, the use of a dickey is considered bad style[ by whom? ] in the wearing of traditional modes of black tie and white tie evening dress.[ when? ] Etymologically, the word dickey is from Cockney rhyming slang, wherein dicky dirt denotes a shirt. In 1850s Britain, office workers wore business suits, yet their low wages disallowed a work week's supply of laundered shirts, so they adopted the dickey as a practical extension of the sartorial life of a dress shirt at work. [2]
Celluloid dickeys were popular for their waterproof and stain-resistant properties. Unlike traditional cloth shirt-fronts, they remained sleek, bright white, and did not wilt or wrinkle. Celluloid dickeys simulated the look of a formal shirt bib for day and evening wear. They were designed in a variety of patents, such as: rounded, flat-end, no restraints, a restraint tab at the end of the bib or side straps that tied at the wearer's back. For this reason, they were popular with entertainers, musicians, and other performers. Nevertheless, they were frequently maligned and spoofed for their stiffness, un-manageability, and tendency to pop out of place. "The flapping dickey", a famous Vaudeville cliché, involves a dickey which has been intentionally rigged to flap in a comical fashion. For example, in the Looney Tunes cartoon Long-Haired Hare , orchestra conductor Bugs Bunny conducts an arrogant opera singer and makes him hold a note so long that his dickey snaps out of his waistcoat and rolls up to his throat.
Cardboard dickeys were worn in theater and service professions to save money from using linen formal shirts for uniforms. Examples of professions that used cardboard dickeys include waiters, hotel managers, doormen, bellboys, limo drivers, and servants.[ citation needed ]
Cloth dickeys simulate many different styles. Some often-seen examples include dress shirt front and collar, formal frilled shirt front (popular in the mid-1970s with powder blue tuxedos), and most commonly in modern times, false turtleneck sweater fronts. Cloth dickeys are also often used in marching band uniforms.
Hard plastic dickeys have long since gone out of manufacture and fashion, but cloth turtleneck-style dickeys are still sometimes seen.
The dickey, traditionally worn by men, made the transition to women's wear around 1943. [3] While women may have worn dickeys before this time, ads in Vogue New York can be seen promoting dickeys in the February 1943 issue. Dickeys were said to “enliven your new suit or rejuvenate your old”. Women's dickeys were made from cotton or rayon and embellished with embroidery, lace, jabots, and ruffles. They were priced between $2 and $3 at the time. [3]
Patterns for women's dickeys can also be found dating to 1944, with Butterick's patterns providing eight variations on the dickey. [4] While dickeys have gone in and out of style over time, they have made a resurgence in the fashion world, with the most recent one starting in 2015. [5] [6]
Recently,[ when? ] dickeys have been rising in popularity. In 2011, dickeys and menswear-inspired lingerie became popular as a break from minimalist and restrictive fashion at the time. [7] At the same time, detachable collars and dickeys were showing up on the runway as Peter Pan collars. [8] In 2013, the materials used for dickies was expanding from knits and cotton, to leather and silk. [9] The 2014 fall winter season saw the dickey return as a winter accessory used to keep the neck warm. [10] By 2015, contemporary designers, like Michael Kors, adopted the dickey in his resort line. In an interview with InStyle magazine, Kors said the dickey was a way to add versatility to a look, without adding bulk. [11]
The rise of the dickey in pop culture has also encouraged the rise in popularity. For example, on the TV series The Big Bang Theory , a dickey is worn by the character Howard Wolowitz, as well as in Dinner for Schmucks , where the character Therman Murch (played by Zach Galifianakis) wore an orange turtleneck dickey. In 2012, the character Liz Lemon wore a "sweater" type dickey on the opening episode of season 6 on the TV series 30 Rock . [12]
Appearances in film also occurred in the 1980s, such as Cousin Eddie (played by Randy Quaid) in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) who wore a dark-green turtleneck dickey underneath an ivory sweater, and the character Kent who wore a dickey in the end scenes of the 1985 movie Real Genius .
A form of a dickey, often called a rabat or stock, is still commonplace in the attire of some Christian clergy. It is worn either over a clerical shirt or another shirt and under a jacket.
The dickey is not just a facet of menswear clothing, it is also used in certain types of cultural dress.
Historically, Armenian dress consisted of layers, a result of the variability of the weather, with short and hot summers and long and cold winters. Layers could be switched out easily when changes in the weather occurred. One component of this layering was a dicky style shirt that was heavily embroidered to cover the chest if the woman's outer dress was low cut. [13]
It is traditional for Greek widows to wear black to signify their mourning. Historically, widows in certain regions of Greece, specifically Peloponnese and Euboea, "wore a plain white chemise and an unembroidered sigouni with a black dickey, black headscarf and black apron." [14]
Both men and women of the Sámi culture of Northern Europe, particularly in the central and southern parts of the Sámi region, wear dickeys under certain tunic styles. The tunics often have a V-neck opening that the dicky is worn under. The dickeys are usually rectangular and are made from wool. Traditionally, women wear red wool while men wear blue. The dickey is usually decorated with reindeer skin around the edges and metallic thread and glass beads in the center. The purpose is for the dickey to be the focal point of the outfit. [15]
Black tie is a semi-formal Western dress code for evening events, originating in British and North American conventions for attire in the 19th century. In British English, the dress code is often referred to synecdochically by its principal element for men, the dinner suit or dinner jacket. In American English, the equivalent term tuxedo is common. The dinner suit is a black, midnight blue or white two- or three-piece suit, distinguished by satin or grosgrain jacket lapels and similar stripes along the outseam of the trousers. It is worn with a white dress shirt with standing or turndown collar and link cuffs, a black bow tie, typically an evening waistcoat or a cummerbund, and black patent leather dress shoes or court pumps. Accessories may include a semi-formal homburg, bowler, or boater hat. For women, an evening gown or other fashionable evening attire may be worn.
A jumper, jumper dress, or pinafore dress is a sleeveless, collarless dress intended to be worn over a blouse, shirt, T-shirt or sweater. Hemlines can be of different lengths and the type of collar and whether or not there is pleating are also variables in the design.
A sweater or pullover, also called a jersey or jumper, is a piece of clothing, typically with long sleeves, made of knitted or crocheted material that covers the upper part of the body. When sleeveless, the garment is often called a slipover, tank top, or sweater vest.
A shirt is a cloth garment for the upper body.
The bow tie or dicky bow is a type of necktie. A modern bow tie is tied using a common shoelace knot, which is also called the bow knot for that reason. It consists of a ribbon of fabric tied around the collar of a shirt in a symmetrical manner so that the two opposite ends form loops.
A polo neck, roll-neck, turtleneck, or skivvy is a garment—usually a sweater—with a close-fitting collar that folds over and covers the neck. It can also refer to the type of neckline, the style of collar itself, or be used as an adjective.
Clerical clothing is non-liturgical clothing worn exclusively by clergy. It is distinct from vestments in that it is not reserved specifically for use in the liturgy. Practices vary: clerical clothing is sometimes worn under vestments, and sometimes as the everyday clothing or street wear of a priest, minister, or other clergy member. Eastern Orthodox clerical clothing is a subset of a monk's habit.
Clothing terminology comprises the names of individual garments and classes of garments, as well as the specialized vocabularies of the trades that have designed, manufactured, marketed and sold clothing over hundreds of years.
An upturned collar is an otherwise flat, protruding collar of either a shirt, Polo, jacket, or coat that has been turned upward.
A dress shirt, button shirt, button-front, button-front shirt, or button-up shirt is a garment with a collar and a full-length opening at the front, which is fastened using buttons or shirt studs. A button-down or button-down shirt is a dress shirt with a button-down collar – a collar having the ends fastened to the shirt with buttons.
Fashion in the 1990s was defined by a return to minimalist fashion, in contrast to the more elaborate and flashy trends of the 1980s. One notable shift was the mainstream adoption of tattoos, body piercings aside from ear piercing and, to a much lesser extent, other forms of body modification such as branding.
1840s fashion in European and European-influenced clothing is characterized by a narrow, natural shoulder line following the exaggerated puffed sleeves of the later 1820s and 1830s. The narrower shoulder was accompanied by a lower waistline for both men and women.
Court uniform and dress were required to be worn by those in attendance at the royal court in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
1880s fashion in Western and Western-influenced countries is characterized by the return of the bustle. The long, lean line of the late 1870s was replaced by a full, curvy silhouette with gradually widening shoulders. Fashionable waists were low and tiny below a full, low bust supported by a corset. The Rational Dress Society was founded in 1881 in reaction to the extremes of fashionable corsetry.
Fashion in the years following World War II is characterized by the resurgence of haute couture after the austerity of the war years. Square shoulders and short skirts were replaced by the soft femininity of Christian Dior's "New Look" silhouette, with its sweeping longer skirts, fitted waist, and rounded shoulders, which in turn gave way to an unfitted, structural look in the later 1950s.
Western fashion in the 1920s underwent a modernization. Women's fashion continued to evolve from the restrictions of gender roles and traditional styles of the Victorian era. Women wore looser clothing which revealed more of the arms and legs, that had begun at least a decade prior with the rising of hemlines to the ankle and the movement from the S-bend corset to the columnar silhouette of the 1910s. Men also began to wear less formal daily attire and athletic clothing or 'Sportswear' became a part of mainstream fashion for the first time.
A cheerleading uniform is a standardized outfit worn by cheerleaders during games and other events. These uniforms typically include the official colors and mascots of the school or team and are designed to make the wearer appear physically attractive. Early cheerleading outfits had pants or long dresses, but as cheerleading stunts became more complex, cheerleader uniforms have adapted to allow better range of motion.
A back closure is a means for fastening a garment at the rear, such as with a zipper, hooks-and-eyes or buttons. Back closures were once common on Western female clothing, but have recently become less so, especially on female casual and business attire. They continue, however, to be widely used in underwear, formal wear and specialized clothing. Back closures are also common in garments for infants and toddlers.
A dress is a one-piece outer garment that is worn on the torso and hangs down over the legs and is primarily worn by women or girls. Dresses often consist of a bodice attached to a skirt.
The clothing style and fashion sense of the Philippines in the modern-day era have been influenced by the indigenous peoples, Chinese waves of immigration, the Spaniards, and the Americans, as evidenced by the chronology of events that occurred in Philippine history. At present, Filipinos conform their way of dressing based on classic fashion or prevailing fashion trends.