NOS 20's spearpoint dress shirt with unique texture

[Patrick Hall]

Bet Luxire has no fabric that equals this.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-192...pt=Vintage_Men_s_Clothing&hash=item5af4d1a31a

 

[Two Types]

You've set them a challenge now!

 

[Fastuni]

nice - but certainly 1940's. No way 20's.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I'd have guessed 1930s on that one.

 

[Fastuni]

While buttoned through shirts certainly existed, I would have thought that this feature would place it more likely into the 40's, no?

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Tunic shirts are vanishingly rare (except stiff-fronted dress shirts) in the US from the middle 20s onwards. Everything (and certainly at the lower-middle end of the market) was full button front in the 30s.

Europe of course is a different story. There is a scene in the book "The Gilt Kid" (a British socialist proto-noir from 1936) where the Gilt Kid, just out of prison, in a barber's being shaved and trimmed send the barber's helper out to buy a shirt "Yankee-style, you know the kind with a collar attached and you put it on like a coat".

 

[Two Types]

Brilliant reference, cheers BK.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

They only became dominant in Britain in the 50s, of course, but certainly they were around in the mid-40s, as some kind of new innovation from across the pond.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

TT, what do the Kay's catalogues from the mid 30s show in terms of shirt models? Any full button front?

 

[Two Types]

Kays catalogues appear to show tunic shirts all the way into the mid 1950s. It seems to only be full button for some casual shirts.

 

[Two Types]

Just to correct that: in 1953 Kays offered the 'Stardust' shirt which was a "new style shirt which is becoming all the rage". It would seem likely that this refers to a button through shirt. So we can assume that tunic shirts remained predominant until at least 1953.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Yes, probably. I have a probable mid-50s British shirt that's full button front. It retains the length of older British/European shirts, but with a rather more modern-looking collar and fabric (miracle, of some sort).