The Fourth Doctor’s Victorian Shirt – Part 1

Some time ago I started to watch the old Doctor Who Classic series. The Doctor always had a fascinating fashion sense. And then I meet the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker, with the long scarf ;)) for the first time. He wears a mixture of Victorian and Steampunk clothes and they are even suitable for everyday wear. At least if your daily routine consists of traveling through time and saving the world. But who doesn’t do that.

And since this is basically my favourite fashion style and I finally wanted to sew some men’s clothing, I chose the Victorian shirt the Doctor wears almost continuously through series 13 to 15. The most obvious peculiarity is the cutout standup collar.

Research

To get an overview over the Doctor’s clothes the Making my 4th Doctor Costume blog is an excellent starting point. The author has broken down and analyzed the doctor’s clothes by serial respectively episodes and added helpful images and comments. And you can buy high-quality replicas from Magnoli Clothiers, but their versions aren’t entirely screen-accurate.

But since all of this wasn’t accurate enough for me, I started my own research. It may be that I became a little obsessive, but I heard that is completely acceptable for Doctor Who fans. 😉

To analyze the Victorian shirt the following episodes are best: The Brain of Morbius Part 2, The Hand of Fear Part 1 & 4 and The Deadly Assassin Part 1. In The Brain of Morbius Part 2 you can see the shirt collar and shirtfront open. And in the other Episodes the Doctor removes his frock coat and scarf that usually cover most of his other clothing. In The Hand of Fear Part 1 he is also moving about a lot, which shows the cut and drape of his clothes. These episodes are equally suitable to study his waiscoat and trousers. They are usually covered by his frock coat as well.

Closed collar -The Brain of Morbius 01

Open collar -The Brain of Morbius 02

The collar goes up to the jaw and is cut out in a semicircle in the front to accommodate the chin. It is made from one piece and can be closed with one button in the front. Here I had to experiment a bit to get the pattern right. The collar has to be very tight around the neck on the bottom and flare out a bit toward the top, so there aren’t too many wrinkles. And the cutout in the front has to be adjusted depending on the form of your face.

The remainder of the shirt is made from very simple cut parts. the body is made from two rectangles without an arm cutout. Consequently the sleeves don’t have a rounded sleeve head. This moves the sleeve set-in seam down to the upper arm. The sleeves are rather wider and are taken in at the wrist. Some of the additional width is also gathered in two small pleats at the shoulder seam. This cut is very close to that of a Garibaldi shirt. These shirts were popular as women’s clothing around 1860. The women’s version was an adaption of the shirt worn by Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italien folk hero. This shirt is also the predecessor of the modern blouse.

I also noticed that the sleeve went is sewn directly into the underarm seam and it doesn’t have any plackets. The plackets I added in my version to make the sleeve vent more durable.