Dickey (garment)

Etymologically, the word dickey is from Cockney rhyming slang, wherein dicky dirt denotes a shirt.

Unlike traditional cloth shirt-fronts, they remained sleek, bright white, and did not wilt or wrinkle.

For example, in the Looney Tunes cartoon Long-Haired Hare, orchestra conductor Bugs Bunny conducts an arrogant opera singer and makes him hold a note so long that his dickey snaps out of his waistcoat and rolls up to his throat.

Cardboard dickeys were worn in theater and service professions to save money from using linen formal shirts for uniforms.

Examples of professions that used cardboard dickeys include waiters, hotel managers, doormen, bellboys, limo drivers, and servants.

Women's dickeys were made from cotton or rayon and embellished with embroidery, lace, jabots, and ruffles.

In 2012, the character Liz Lemon wore a "sweater" type dickey on the opening episode of season 6 on the TV series 30 Rock.

[12] Appearances in film also occurred in the 1980s, such as Cousin Eddie (played by Randy Quaid) in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) who wore a dark-green turtleneck dickey underneath an ivory sweater, and the character Kent who wore a dickey in the end scenes of the 1985 movie Real Genius.

Historically, Armenian dress consisted of layers, a result of the variability of the weather, with short and hot summers and long and cold winters.

One component of this layering was a dicky style shirt that was heavily embroidered to cover the chest if the woman's outer dress was low cut.

The dickey is usually decorated with reindeer skin around the edges and metallic thread and glass beads in the center.