Cowboy Era Shirt 1866-1900
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When I started my adventures in historical clothing I was mostly interested in woman's clothing, but with a
new husband I soon found myself researching more and more on the gentleman's attire also. I started a survey of
period photographs, listing each person in the photo and making a note of what type of shirt they were wearing.
I discovered that only about 5% of the men shown wore band collar shirts without a button on collar. I could not
positively tell what percentage of them might be wearing a changeable collar with their shirts, but I imagine that
most of them were businessmen, or respectable gentlemen, not the lonely cowboy. Most photos of the cowboys showed
shirts with collars sewn into the band, much like is shown for the work shirt, or the nightshirts shown in the 1882 Butterick's pattern catalog. I suspect that the fine cotton of a dress shirt with a band collar would not have held up well on the trail, and the work shirts offered for sale had collars. Patterns offered show band collar shirts, but most cowboys had no female attachments to sew these shirts for them. |
Approx. 1870's Showing an attempt to dress up a work shirt by placing a white collar over an existing collar.
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4 Views of Shooting Star's Man's Shirt Pattern
| In the 1875 Montgomery Ward & Co. catalog, Men's white shirts were listed with back or front closures for between $1.25 to $2.00 each depending on the grade of cloth. Other shirts listed in this catalog are Cotton Checked shirts , Hickory shirts, Cheviot Stripe shirts at .65 and .90, and Calico Shirts at .40 and .75. Remember that in the 1800's calico did not necessarily mean a floral print, it was simply a type of cotton fabric. Fabrics were probably striped, solid colors or plaid, in several weights of cotton, or perhaps wool flannel. Cheviot stripe is a heavy twill cloth and Hickory stripe is the type of heavy stripe the "engineer hats" are made of- much like pillow ticking. Dress shirt fronts may be made from plain white cotton, linen, or a heavier corded fabric. If you had a print shirt you were probably a married man and your shirt was made from the ends of your wife's last dress length. (Fabric was often bought in "dress lengths" of premeasured lengths around 12 yards, If the fashionable style that year for the lady did not require that much she put it to good use making the rest of her family clothing.) |
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| From my studies it is my belief that if a sleeve would not fit on half a width of 36" fabric (one of the most common widths for fine white cotton) a gusset was added to the width of the fabric to allow the extra space needed. The shape of this gusset was changeable depending on the cutter's desire. My pattern shows a small gusset on each side, but I have seen shirts with only one gusset. |
Sleeve gussets were at this time an economy of fabric, unlike earlier square cut shirts where
they were necessary to allow arm movement. |
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Two collars are also included in the Shooting Star pattern. One is a Tux collar, the tips may be pressed down or I have seen them worn up, and the other is a "Perry" collar or as I call it a "Pat Garrett" collar- after the popular photo of him all dandied up. They are sized to be worn over the band collar. If a shirt stud is not readily available you may sew together a small shanked button and a flat shirt button as shown and it will make quite a serviceable collar stud. |
Shooting Star Enterprises offers the shirt patterns shown in this article in a
single mutisized (M -XXL) pattern
From our Merchantile
Printable Order form
Tintype -A fold down collar shirt
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