Clothing terminology: Encyclopedia - Clothing terminology

Clothing terminology

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.

Clothing terminology ranges from the arcane (watchet, a pale blue color name from the sixteenth century) to the everyday (t-shirt), and changes over time in response to fashion which in turn reflects social, artistic, and political trends.

Clothing terminology - Categories of clothing terminology

At its broadest, clothing terminology may be said to include names for:

• Classes of basic garments: shirt, coat, dress, suit, underwear
• Contemporary and historical styles of garments: frock coat, t-shirt, doublet
• Parts of garments: sleeve, collar, lapel
• Styles of these: juliette sleeve, Peter Pan collar
• Clothing details: pocket, french cuff, zipper
• Traditional garments: cheongsam, kilt, dirndl
• Fashions and "anti-fashions": preppy, New Look, hip-hop, rational dress
• Fabrics: denim, wool
• Fabric treatments: fabric painting, transfers, ikat, tie-dye, batik
• Fabric manipulation: pleat, tuck, gather, smocking
• Colors and dyes: madder red, indigo, isabella
• Sewing terms: cut, hem, armscye, lining
• Patternmaking terms: sloper
• Methods of manufacture: haute couture, bespoke tailoring, ready-to-wear
• Retailers' terms:
  • Size ranges: missy, plus size, big-and-tall
  • Retail seasons: back-to-school, holiday, resort
  • Departments: special occasion, sportswear, bridge fashion
  • Degrees of formality: formal wear, bridal, business casual

Clothing terminology - Persistence of clothing terminology

Despite the constant introduction of new terms by fashion designers, clothing manufacturers and marketers, the names for several basic garment classes in English are very stable over time. Gown, shirt/skirt, frock, and coat are all attested back to the early medieval period.

Gown (from medieval Latin gunna) was a basic clothing term for hundreds of years, referring to a garment that hangs from the shoulders. In medieval and renaissance England gown referred to a loose outer garment worn by both men and women, sometimes short, more often ankle length, with sleeves. By the eighteenth century gown had become a standard category term for a woman's dress, a meaning it retained until the mid-twentieth century. Only in the last few decades has gown lost this general meaning in favor of dress. Today the term gown is retained only in specialized cases: academic dress or cap and gown, evening gown, nightgown, hospital gown, and so on.

Shirt and skirt are originally the same word, the former being the southern and the latter the northern pronunication in early Middle English. Like gown, shirt is becoming a specialized term in Britain, though it retains its general meaning in the U.S. (see Shirt).

Coat remains a term for an overgarment, its essential meaning for the last thousand years (see Coat).

Clothing terminology - Sources of new terminology

Names for new styles or fashions in clothing are frequently the deliberate inventions of fashion designers or clothing manufacturers; these include Chanel's Little Black Dress (a term which has survived) and Lanvin's robe de style (which has not). Other terms are of more obscure origin.

Clothing terminology - Personal names

Clothing styles are frequently named after people — often with a military connection:

• The Garibaldi jacket and Garibaldi shirt were bright red woolen garments for women with black embroidery or braid and military details popular in the 1860s; they are named after the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi who visited England in 1863.

• The Eisenhower jacket is a waist-length, military jacket based on the World War II Army "Wool Field Jacket, M-1944" introduced by General Dwight Eisenhower.

• The cardigan is a knitted jacket or button-front sweater created to keep British soldiers warm in Russian winters. It is named for James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, who led the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War (1854).

• The Mao jacket is a very plain (often grey), high-collared, shirtlike jacket customarily worn by Mao Zedong and the people of China during his regime. Its drab design and uniformity was a reaction to pre-Revolution class distinctions of clothes, with elites dressing in elaborate silks, while poor laborers wore very rough clothes.

• The Nehru jacket is a uniform jacket without lapels or collars, popularized by Jawaharial Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India.

Clothing terminology - Place names

Another fertile source for clothing terms is place names, which usually reflect the origin (or supposed origin) of a fashion. Modern terms such as Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and Fair Isle sweaters are the latest in a long line that stretches back to jersey (originally Jersey frock), Balaclava, mantua, holland (linen), and denim ("serge de Nîmes" after the city).

Clothing terminology - Short forms

A notable trend at the turn of the twenty-first century is "cute" short forms: camisole becomes cami, hooded sweaters or sweatshirts become hoodies, and as of 2005, short or "shrunken" cardigans are cardies.

The much-older term shimmy for "slip" is most likely a false singular from chemise.

Clothing terminology - External references

Stylopedia -- an online dictionary of fashion details

ApparelSeach glossary of textile and apparel terms

Garibaldi jacket

Eisenhower jacket

Categories: Clothing | History of fashion

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Clothing terminology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki