The term chemise or shift can refer to the classic smock,
or else can refer to certain modern types of women's undergarments and
dresses. In the classical usage it is a simple garment worn next to the
skin to protect clothing from sweat and body oils, the precursor to the modern shirts commonly worn in Western nations.
Chemise is a French term (which today simply means shirt). This is a cognate of the Italian word camicia, and the Spanish / Portuguese language word camisa (subsequently borrowed as kameez by Hindi / Urdu / Hindustani), all deriving ultimately from the Latin camisia, itself coming from Celtic. (The Romans avidly imported cloth and clothes from the Celts.)[1] The English called the same shirt a smock and the Irish called it a léine
The chemise seems to have been developed from the Roman tunica and first became popular in the European Middle Ages. Women wore shifts or chemises underneath their gowns or robes; men wore chemises with their trousers or braies, and covered the chemises with garments such as doublets, robes, etc. In those times, it was usually the only piece of clothing that was washed regularly.
In
Western countries, women's shirts did not fall out of fashion until the
early 20th century, when they were generally replaced by brassieres, girdles, and full slips.
Men's chemises may be said to survive as the common T-shirt, which still serves as an undergarment. The chemise also morphed into the smock-frock,
a garment worn by English labourers until the early 20th century. Its
loose cut and wide sleeves were well adapted to heavy labour. The name smock is nowadays still used for military combat jackets in the UK, whereas in the Belgian army the term has been corrupted to smoke-vest.
A chemise,
shift, or smock was usually sewn at home, by the women of a household.
It was assembled from rectangles and triangles cut from one piece of
cloth so as to leave no waste. The poor would wear skimpy chemises pieced from a narrow piece of rough cloth; the rich might have voluminous chemises pieced from thin, smooth fine linen.
In modern usage the term chemise generally
refers to women's fashions that vaguely resemble the older shirts but
are typically more delicate, and usually provocative. Most commonly the
term refers to a loose-fitting, sleeveless, shirt-like undergarment or
piece of lingerie. It can also refer to a short, sleeveless dress that
hangs straight from the shoulders and fits loosely at the waist.
There is a similar type of lingerie/sleepwear known as the babydoll.
Both terms describe short, loose-fitting, sleeveless fashions.
Typically, though, babydolls are more loose-fitting at the hips and are
generally designed to more resemble a young girl's nightgown (although
many modern varieties only vaguely follow this definition adding various
sexualizing features).Plus Size Chemises
