The Dickey, or, Abominable False Front

August 1873 Men's Fashions

Loretta reports:

The author of this 1876 guide to men’s dress did not mince words when it came to false shirt fronts. One can only imagine what he'd have to say about, oh, man buns or low-hanging trousers.

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BEAU BRUMMEL said, “A gentleman should show clean linen, and plenty of it.” The first part of this sentence is strictly true, the second less so. There is no need, having a clean shirt on, to publish the fact, or to lead the public to infer you wear it as a disguise by undue exhibition of it. “Virtue is its own reward :” so the assumption of clean underclothing generally, even if its light be kept beneath a bushel, should afford the wearer the same pleasure as if ostentatiously paraded. When I see a man placarding his chest with a wide expanse of lawn, and exhibiting an unnecessary amount of cuffs, I infer he has got on neither a clean nor white shirt. The surmise generally proves correct.

Interlined Shirt Bosoms 1912

I often see in haberdashers' shops an exaggerated collar and lapel in one, designed to cover manly bosom. The commercial name of this impious fraud is called a Dickey. This felonious impostor must be made away with. No one with any self-respect can wear a dickey. A man clad in such an unmitigated imposition is a whited sepulchre of the very blackest type. If the reader knows any so depraved even to possess one, let him persuade the wretched man to pause, ere too late, in his headlong career—to burn the spurious rag, and he can then exclaim, with regenerated heart, “Richard” (not Dickey, mind) “is himself again!”
Many say, however, when this charge is brought against them, that they suffer from neuralgia, lumbago, and tic-douloureux and ... various other ailments ... Well, what excuse is this? I do not prohibit flannel —wear an under flannel shirt—two if you like; but you must cover it with an entire white shirt, not an aliquot part of it. If hypocrisy be the homage which vice pays to virtue, then the assumption of dickey is a sneaking admission of the necessity for showing clean linen, and a discreditable way of making a sham composition with the subject.
— The Gentleman's Art of Dressing with Economy. By a Lounger at the Clubs (1876)

The Lounger's disapproval did not lead to the rapid extinction of the dickey. On the contrary, it lived on into the 20th century, and it isn't dead yet.

Images: August 1873 Men’s Fashions, from the Gentleman's Magazine of Fashion, via Google Books.
Interlined Shirt Bosoms (1912), and Arrow Donchester shirt 1915, courtesy New York Public Library.

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