History of suits

The beginnings of modern suits depicted

In the early 19th century, British dandy Beau Brummell redefined, adapted, and popularized the style of the British court in Europe. Leading European men began wearing well-cut, tailored suits recognizable today. The simplicity of the new clothes and their somber colors contrasted strongly with the extravagant, foppish styles just before. Brummell's influence introduced the modern era of men's clothing which now includes the modern suit jacket, full-length pants, and necktie.[2] Paintings from the 1760s reveal how the modern coat design with lapels emerged. It can be seen in the hunting scene with Count Carl Emil Ulrich von Donop as subject by an unknown artist and William, Count of Schaumburg-Lippe in Hanoverian Field Marshall uniform painted by Joshua Reynolds.[3]

In this regency period, the predominant upper-class clothing introduced by Brummell for day wear was a tightly fitting, dark coloured tailcoat with non-matching (usually pale) trousers, pale waistcoat, white shirt and cravat and tall boots.

Towards the start of the Victorian period and the Gilded Age, the frock coat, initially not just black, became popular, and quickly became the standard daily clothing for gentlemen. From the middle of the 19th century, a new (then informal) coat, the morning coat, became acceptable.[4] It was a less formal garment, with a cut away front, making it suitable for wearing while riding. Morning dress and the frock coat garments were not suits, because they were worn with trousers that didn't match in color or fabric; a matching waistcoat and trousers were considered informal and could be described using the short-lived term ditto suit.[5] The frock coat was still the standard garment for all formal or business occasions, and a tailcoat was worn in the evenings.[6]

Towards the end of the 19th century, the modern lounge suit was born as a very informal garment meant only to be worn for sports, in the country, or at the seaside. The lounge jacket was derived from the paletot coat style, which was loosely cut coat with no waist seam, where the skirt being of one piece with the upper half (unlike the frock coat, which had a seamed waist. The lounge jacket was shaped by darting the front panels from the underarm to the waist.[7]^: 115

Three men in 2006 wearing black tie variations.

Parallel to this, the dinner jacket was invented and came to be worn for informal evening events, beginning in 1888. It was descended from white tie (the dress code associated with the evening tailcoat) but quickly became a full new garment, the dinner jacket, with a new dress code, initially known as 'dress lounge' and later black tie. When it was imported to the United States, it became known as the tuxedo. The 'dress lounge' was originally worn only for small private gatherings and white tie ('White tie and tails') was still worn for large formal events. The 'dress lounge' slowly became more popular for larger events as an alternative to full evening dress in white tie.[7]^: 115

1901, a man in a morning coat.

The beginning of the Edwardian era in the early 20th century brought a steady decline in the wearing of frock coats and the birth of the suit that is recognizable today.[8] The tailcoat began losing interest among upper classes in the United States and Europe. Meanwhile, the morning suit rose in relative formality, first becoming acceptable for businessmen, then becoming standard dress for upper classes. The lounge suit was slowly accepted as being correct outside its original settings and began to be seen in town. While still reserved for private gatherings, usually with no ladies, black ties became more common.

In North America, the "sack suit", a cut of the lounge suit, saw a large rise in popularity, and, except for the shoulders, it is unfitted, loose, and informal, as it has no darts.

At the Treaty of Versailles signing in 1919, the heads of state wore morning dress and lounge suits for informal meetings (as seen here), but frock coats for formal daytime meetings.

After the end of the First World War, most men adopted the short lounge coated suit. Long coats quickly went out of fashion for everyday wear and business, and the morning coat gained its current classification of "formal". During the 1920s, short suits were always worn except on formal occasions in the daytime, when a morning coat would be worn. Older, more conservative men continued to wear a frock coat, or "Prince Albert coat" as it was known.

In North America, for evening occasions, the short dinner jacket virtually replaced the long "full dress" tails, which was perceived as "old hat" and was only worn by old conservative men. Black tie became de-facto evening wear with white tie reserved for only the most formal events.[9] In Britain, black tie became acceptable as a general informal alternative to white tie, though at the time the style and accessories of black tie were still very fluid.

In the 1920s men began wearing wide, straight-legged trousers with their suits. These trousers normally measured 23 inches around the cuff. Younger men often wore even wider-legged trousers which were known as "Oxford bags." Trousers also began to be worn cuffed shortly after World War I and this style persisted until World War II due to rationing. Trousers first began to be worn creased in the 1920s. Trousers were worn very highly waisted throughout the 1920s and this fashion remained in vogue until the 1940s. Single-breasted suits were in style throughout the 1920s and the double-breasted suit was mainly worn by older more conservative men. In the 1920s, very fashionable men would often wear double-breasted waistcoats (with four buttons on each side) with single-breasted coats. Lapels on single-breasted suits were fashionably worn peaked and were often wide. In the early 1930s these styles continued and were often even further exaggerated.

Before 1935 (and again in the 1970s) men preferred snugly tailored coats and waistcoats. In 1935, a complete change in style occurred. Loose fitting coats were introduced, trousers began to be tapered at the bottom and suit coats began to have tapered arms. These new trends were only reluctantly accepted by men at first. At first the waistcoat continued to be made in the traditional fitted and snug style. By 1940, the waistcoat began to be made in a loose style which made it uncomfortable to wear. In fashion magazines of the day, men complained how these new vests continually rode up when they happen to sit down or bend over. Fashionable men changed their preference to the double-breasted suit coat at this time and it would remain in fashion for the next two decades.

By this time, morning dress was being replaced by day time semi-formal, known in North America as the stroller. This was quite popular, but has actually been outlived by the morning coat. Since the 1950s it has been used as a black version of the lounge suit as an informal look to the dinner jacket. In modern times the black lounge suit has become popular to wear during the day.

Reflecting the democratization of wealth and larger trend toward simplification in the decades following the Second World War, the suit was standardized and streamlined. Suit coats were cut as straight as possible without any indication of a waistline, and by the 1960s the lapel had become narrower than at any time prior. Cloth rationing during the war had forced significant changes in style, contributing to a large reduction in the popularity of cuts such as the double-breasted suit.

The New York Times Style Magazine explains one iconic suit of the era, the gray flannel suit:

Back in 1955, when denim was the height of rebelliousness, Sloan Wilson's novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit turned a men's classic into a synonym for drab, middle-class conformity . . . Flannel had humble beginnings — the name is reputedly derived from "gwlanen," Welsh for woolen cloth — and was used for underwear in the 19th century. In the 1880s white flannel was worn for summer sports; by the 1920s the more seasonless gray had become a favorite. When the Prince of Wales wore gray flannel trousers on his 1924 trip to America, they were aped by collegiates on both sides of the Atlantic. Cary Grant and Fred Astaire then carried the trend through to the 1940s. The archetypal square of the postwar era was later described by Esquire's style encyclopedia as 'a neat, circumspect, conservative man who carried an attaché case and regarded a pink button-down shirt as his one sartorial fling'[10]

In the late 1960s and early 1970s the Nehru jacket, an Indian style featuring a mandarin collar, was introduced by entertainers such as Johnny Carson and The Beatles, and saw a brief surge in popularity across Western Europe and the United States.

In the 1970s, a snug-fitting suit coat became popular once again, also encouraging the return of the waistcoat. This new three-piece style became closely associated with disco culture, and was specifically popularized by the film Saturday Night Fever. Fashion brands such Haggar meanwhile started to introduce the concept of "suit separates", a production innovation that reduced the need for excessive customization.

The 1980s saw a trend towards the simplification of the suit once again. The jacket became looser and the waistcoat was completely dispensed with. A few suit makers continued to make waistcoats, but these tended to be cut low and often had only four buttons. The waistline on the suit coat moved down again in the 1980s to a position well below the waist. By 1985-1986, three-piece suits were on the way out and making way for cut double-breasted and two-piece single-breasted suits.

The late 1990s saw the return to popularity of the three-button two-piece suit, which then went back out of fashion some time in the first decade of the twenty-first century.