A placket is a strip of fabric between one and two inches wide sewn onto a garment as a separate piece or sewn into a garment to appear as a part of the garment itself. Plackets are almost always used to facilitate putting on or taking off the garment, but are sometimes used as a design element as well (non-functional design purposes). The term placket usually refers to the center-front of a button-front shirt. Plackets can also be found at the neckline of a shirt, the cuff of a sleeve, or at the waist of a skirt or pair of pants.
Plackets are almost always made of more than one fabric layer and often have interfacing between the fabric layers. This is done to give support and strength to the placket fabric because the placket and the fasteners on it are often subjected to stress when the garment is worn. The two sides of the placket often overlap to protect the wearer from fasteners rubbing against their skin.
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