Clothing Definitions — definitions of garments and clothing terms from Apparel Search
A duster is a light, loose-fitting coat. The first dusters were full-length, light-colored canvas or linen coats worn by horsemen to protect their clothing from trail dust, typically slit up the back to hip level for ease of wear on horseback. At the turn of the twentieth century men and women wore dusters in open motorcars on dirt roads, and in the 1950s the word also named a knee-length housecoat. This page traces those three lives of the duster and its late twentieth-century revival as western wear.
A duster is a light, loose-fitting coat.
The original dusters were full-length, light-colored canvas or linen coats worn by horsemen to protect their clothing from trail dust. These dusters were typically slit up the back to hip level for ease of wear on horseback. At the turn of the 20th century, both men and women wore dusters to protect their clothes when riding in open motorcars on the dirt roads of the day. In the 1950s, a duster was a woman's knee-length, button-front unfitted housecoat which could be thrown on over underwear for housework or cooking.
Contemporary Dusters
Western horsemen's dusters gained renewed popularity in the late twentieth century, primarily through the J. Peterman catalog, and are now a standard item of western wear. They figured little in Western films until Sergio Leone re-introduced them in his The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West. The latter played for many months in Paris and was in part credited with a revival of the duster in men's fashions.
In contemporary women's clothing, a duster is any knee-length or longer unfitted coat, sometimes sleeveless, often sold with matching pants or skirt.
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The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/duster_%28clothing%29 ). 1/18/06 |
The duster began as working protection, not fashion. A horseman crossing dry country arrived with his clothes coated in dust unless something light and washable took the dirt instead, and a full-length coat of canvas or linen did that job while adding almost no weight or heat. The light color mattered too: pale cloth showed dust less and reflected sun. When open motorcars replaced horses on the same unpaved roads, the problem followed the driver, and at the turn of the twentieth century both men and women adopted dusters for motoring, often with goggles and caps as a complete travelling outfit.
The garment's second career came through film and catalogues. Western horsemen's dusters gained renewed popularity in the late twentieth century, primarily through the J. Peterman catalogue, and became a standard item of western wear. They had figured little in Western films until Sergio Leone re-introduced them in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West, whose long Paris run was credited in part with a revival of the duster in men's fashion. The 1950s housecoat use of the word — a knee-length, button-front unfitted coat thrown on for housework — survives in the modern women's duster, an unfitted coat worn as a light layer rather than as protection.
A duster is a light, loose-fitting coat. The first dusters were full-length, light-colored canvas or linen coats worn by horsemen to protect their clothing from trail dust.
The original horsemen's dusters were typically slit up the back to hip level so the coat fell to either side of the saddle and allowed ease of wear on horseback.
In contemporary women's clothing a duster is any knee-length or longer unfitted coat, sometimes sleeveless, often sold with matching pants or a skirt.