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For the wall in fortification, see Chemise (wall).

Fashionable young men in early 16th century Germany showed a lot of fine linen in a studied negligence. This unidentified gentleman has a band of "smocking" round the collar of his shift. (Portrait by Ambrosius Holbein, 1518, at the Hermitage Museum)

The term chemise can refer to the classic smock or shift, or else can refer to certain modern types of women's undergarments and dresses. In the classical usage it is a simple garment worn next to the skin to protect clothing from sweat and body oils, the precursor to the modern shirts commonly worn in Western nations. Chemise is the French term (which today simply means shirt). This is a cognate of the Italian word camicia, and the Spanish / Portuguese word camisa (subsequently borrowed by Hindi / Urdu), all deriving from the Late Latin camisia / Late Classical Greek kamision. The English called the same shirt a smock and the Irish called it a léine (IPA: /'leɪnjə/).

The chemise seems to have been developed from the Roman tunica and first became popular in the European Middle Ages. Women wore shifts or chemises underneath their gowns or robes; men wore chemises with their trousers or braies, and covered the chemises with garments such as doublets, robes, etc. In those times, it was usually the only piece of clothing that was washed regularly.

In Western countries, women's shifts did not fall out of fashion until the early 20th century, when they were generally replaced by brassieres, panties, girdles, and full slips.

Men's chemises may be said to still survive, as the common shirt. However, the shirt is now an outer garment, and is often protected from skin oil and perspiration by an undershirt or T-shirt worn next to the skin. The chemise also morphed into the smock-frock, a garment worn by English laborers until the early 20th century. Its loose cut and wide sleeves were well adapted to heavy labor. The name smock is nowadays still used for military combat jackets in the UK, whereas in the Belgian army the term has been corrupted to smoke-vest.

Chemise or shift of the 1830s has elbow-length sleeves and is worn under a corset and petticoats.

A chemise, shift, or smock was usually sewn at home, by the women of a household. It was assembled from rectangles and triangles cut from one piece of cloth so as to leave no waste. The poor would wear skimpy chemises pieced from a narrow piece of rough cloth; the rich might have voluminous chemises pieced from thin, smooth fine linen.

In modern usage the term chemise generally refers to women's fashions that vaguely resemble the older shifts but are typically more delicate, and usually provocative. Most commonly the term refers to a loose-fitting, sleeveless, shirt-like undergarment or piece of lingerie. It can also refer to a short, sleeveless dress that hangs straight from the shoulders and fits loosely at the waist.

There is a similar type of lingerie/sleepwear known as the babydoll. Both terms describe short, loose-fitting, sleeveless fashions. Typically, though, babydolls are more loose-fitting at the hips and are generally designed to more resemble a young girl's nightgown (although many modern varieties only vaguely follow this definition adding various sexualizing features which, of course, would only be appropriate for an adult).

• Lingerie
• Undergarments
• Hosiery

• Cut My Cote, by Dorothy Burnham, Royal Ontario Museum, 1973. A survey of shirt patterns over the ages, with diagrams.

• "A Plain Linen Shift: Plain Sewing Makes the Most of Your Fabric", by Kathleen R. Smith, Threads Magazine, Feb/Mar 1987.

• La Couturière Parisienne Historical pictures and patterns.

• Camisards: after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a revolt by the guerilla Protestant "Camisards" (Occitan camisa, 'smock' or 'shirtsleeves') broke out in 1702, in the rugged and isolated Cevennes region of south-central France.