Here’s one example of Modern Pop Culture sleeve garters:
Telegraph operators, bank clerks and printers wore them too, possibly along with a green celluloid eyeshade; they appear in movies ranging from Westerns to 1930s gangster stuff. The intention was to keep sleeves pulled tightly away from ink and other risks of staining.
An alternative - or extra - was to wear protective “sleeve stockings”.
Old-style shirts were cut longer and fuller than modern styles, and besides the protective aspect of the previous examples, sleeve garters also allowed for adjustment so “the right amount” of cuff showed between hand and jacket.
When gamblers wore them it was partly for fashion and partly to show there was no spare room for an Ace up the sleeve.
(Hah. I just bet. If that’s the right phrase and I don’t think so.)
Period shirts also had separate collars, cuffs and bib / bosom / dickie / shirt-front - these were the bits most likely to get dirty, so could be exchanged for clean ones without washing the entire shirt.
They were made of starched linen, celluloid or stiff paper, and the cuffs could be used as somewhere to make a hasty note perhaps using a miniature propelling pencil like this, one of the many useful (or indeed “useful”) gadgets that could be attached to a watch-chain.
Paper collars-and-cuffs were disposable, cloth ones were washable (though needed re-starched afterwards), and celluloid ones could be wiped clean like a modern white-board.
(Sapolio still exists, BTW.)
Old silent comedy films sometimes showed characters who looked fine at first but were so hard-up than all they wore beneath their jacket is a vest (undershirt, not waistcoat), collar, cuffs and shirt-front, with no shirt at all. IIRC Charlie Chaplin did this at least once.
Here’s a video showing the whole process. It’s more complicated than I thought, and also mentions sleeve garters as “an extra step”…
…while this video shows the business of wearing collar-cuffs-and-bib (etc.) without a shirt.
Incidentally, the chap in the video is wearing a monocle not just for The Look Of The Thing, but because he has monocular astigmatism. Another of those neat situations where - like the lumbar support of a well-made corset - period clothing provides a modern benefit.
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