A dress shirt, button shirt, button-front, button-front shirt, or button-up shirt is a garment with a collar and a full-length opening at the front, which is fastened using buttons or shirt studs.

When were button down shirts popular?

Button-down collars, or "sport collars" have points fastened down by buttons on the front of the shirt. Introduced by Brooks Brothers in 1896, they were patterned after the shirts of polo players and were used exclusively on sports shirts until the 1950s in America.

Where did button up shirts originate?

Polo players often found that when they were charging around the field on horses, the collars of their shirts would flap up in the wind, and impair their vision. So they attached buttons to their collars, in order to hold them down for matches. It was John E. Brooks who first made the button down shirt a fashion item.