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The stuffed shirt – often called a shirtwaist – was a popular form of dress even up to the beginning of the last century. These shirts were starched to almost extreme stiffness, and were laden with all sorts of frilly designs. Since the idea of using mannequins to display clothing was not yet in vogue, store merchants would set up window displays of these stiff shirtwaists stuffed full of newspapers or equivalent.  The displays looked deceptively dashing, but were in fact quite flimsy.

Later on, people began to allude to anyone indulging in empty boasting as a STUFFED SHIRT, a perfect replica to those stiff shirts with nothing solid inside them to keep them up.