Materials used for the bodies of evening dress shirts?

[Anthony Jordan]

I have just taken delivery of a vintage New & Lingwood white tie dress shirt, plain stiff front with matching link cuffs. So far so good, but the body is like nothing I have ever seen before. The dark pinstriped effect apparently visible in the photograph is not in fact a stripe at all. It is the colour of the surface the shirt is lying on showing through the thin parts of the weave! I assume it must be some sort of lightweight material, but what I don't know. an anyone help me identify the fabric? It seems to me fairly atypical but my experience of top-end evening dress shirts is fairly limited.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[marcodalondra]



I have just taken delivery of a vintage New & Lingwood white tie dress shirt, plain stiff front with matching link cuffs. So far so good, but the body is like nothing I have ever seen before. The dark pinstriped effect apparently visible in the photograph is not in fact a stripe at all. It is the colour of the surface the shirt is lying on showing through the thin parts of the weave! I assume it must be some sort of lightweight material, but what I don't know. an anyone help me identify the fabric? It seems to me fairly atypical but my experience of top-end evening dress shirts is fairly limited.

Many thanks in advance.

It looks like Etamine, actually I am pretty sure it is. Or at least that is what Bonfanti call it (the only mill I have this fabric from) it is a completely transparent fabric.

I think voile would already be transparent enough.

 

[marcodalondra]

Or a fine, all white, end-on-end could be a good alternative. The bottom line is that in the past, and now if if you will never take the jacket off, you needed the lightest shirt body, as the only visible parts were the bib, collar and cuffs.

 

[CrimsonSox]

Surprisingly, linen used to be worn in the body of evening shirts, as this 1948 article on Brooks Brothers indicates (cross-post from the "Old Brooks Brothers" thread):

 

[marcodalondra]

I have seen and be inspired about using linen for the bib, collar and cuffs and have actually bought a lenght of G&R whiter then white linen and had started fittings with my old shirtmaker before shelfing the project for now.