Today The Witchery is launching their eighth annual White Shirt Campaign in partnership with the OCRF. It’s a simple and truly lovely goal, save as many womens lives as possible.
Their goal is to find a cure for this heartbreaking disease through fashion, and during April Witchery will be giving 100% of the gross proceeds of every white shirt sold directly to the OCRF.
You can be a part of the fight against ovarian cancer by purchasing a white shirt, with all proceeds going into research. One woman dies every hour of ovarian cancer in Australian – an early detection test is vital.
For more information please visit: www.witchery.com.au OR www.ocrf.com.au
A classic white shirt is as timeless as fashion gets.
In case you didn’t already know, the white shirt is a wardrobe essential. It takes you anywhere, adds polish to every outfit, and never goes out of style. A good crisp white shirt is one of the absolute biggest wardrobe staples that literally never goes out of fashion. But for some reason, it can still be difficult to find a cute and classic white shirt that doesn’t make you look like you’re gearing up for a new term back at school.
There’s nothing like a white shirt to show the character of the one who wears it. Here you have some ideas and inspo of how to wear them.
Oversize it
Go sleeveless
Add something extra
Keep it casual
HISTORY OF THE WHITE SHIRT
It made its first public appearance at the Salon in Paris, worn by a queen in a portrait: Marie Antoinette in a muslin dress. A style and a portrait – by Madame Vigée-Lebrun – far from the royal etiquette: in 1793 it caused a scandal.
In the 19th century it was embellished by bouffant details, and by the end of the century it became a symbol of wealth, since it was worn by those who didn’t work, so they couldn’t stain its whiteness.
In the Forties it became a trend thanks to the stars of Hollywood: in 1938 Katharine Hepburn wore it in Holiday; Ava Gardner wore a short-sleeved model with wide shorts and lipstick, followed by Lauren Bacall in Key Largo in 1948: white shirt and ice-cold look.
In the Fifties it took Audrey Hepburn to make the shirt with rolled sleeves and lifted collar iconic: she was a princess hanging around with Gregory Peck, those were her Roman Holidays.
In those years, femininity was particularly under the spotlight. The pin up style was trendy – shorts and curves, the shirt often tied up to emphasize the decolletage, the bust peeking through. The same happened in the Sixties, but the white shirt was turning into an androgynous piece, an unaware feminist manifesto. In a 1967 shot, Twiggy wore a pinstriped suit, a white shirt and tie.
Among all the pictures showing the history of the white shirt, Robert Mapplethorpe’s black and white portrait of Patti Smith, the cover of her first album, Horses, is legendary: Patti became an androgynous icon, the album a best seller, the white shirt – in this masculine version – a must-have.
So in the Seventies, even Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn gave their personal interpretations of the androgynous appeal of white cotton.
In the Eighties, it was paired to Ray-Bans and black jacket à la Blues Brothers; it was also revived with a retro-rock vibe by Prince, who wore white shirts with ruffled jabots. In 1986 a masculine-yet-sexy version appeared, thanks to Kim Basinger in Nine ½ Weeks. In 1987, another movie, Dirty Dancing, re-launched the trend of the tied-up white shirt: many girls copied the protagonist, Frances “Baby” Houseman.
Nineties. The oversized shirt worn by Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, and in 1994 a shirt as stylish as its wearer, Uma Thurman, was paired to cigarette pants and ballerina flats in Pulp Fiction. The point of view progressively became anarchic: all the nine top models on the 100th anniversary cover of Vogue US wore the same GAP shirt.
In 2003 an oversized shirt was seen on Gwyneth Paltrow, who hastily put that shirt only on, before running from a hotel room and getting herself a drink (it was a Martini commercial). Many other celebrities sported it in any occasion, in different outfits – Katie Holmes, Jennifer Aniston, Eva Mendes, Cameron Diaz, Kate Hudson and Gwen Stefani.
