Describing a low-cut neckline that exposes the upper chest and sometimes the shoulders.
In French, décolleté is both an adjective and a noun. The adjective describes a dress or bodice cut to bare the neck and sometimes the shoulders. The noun names that opening, from a pointed to a square cut, and also the bared throat and shoulders themselves. English uses décolleté mainly as an adjective, for a garment with a very low top, and décolletage for that very low top edge, a low neckline.
Two French uses catch out translators. Applied to shoes, décolleté means cut low to show the foot, and the noun can mean a pump (escarpin). And décolletage in French is also a machining term, bar turning, the making of small parts on an automatic lathe; it has its own entry, décolletage.
In job listings
Décolleté is a word of product description rather than of job titles. A neckline is drawn by the design studio and drafted by pattern makers, who, in the Ministry of Culture’s account of couture ateliers, turn the designer’s ideas into the base patterns for each garment. See current pattern maker roles.
