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.
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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
- 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
Persistence of clothing terminology
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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).
References
Picken, Mary Brooks: The Fashion Dictionary, Funk and Wagnalls, 1957.
External references
Stylopedia -- an online dictionary of fashion details
ApparelSeach glossary of textile and apparel terms