Morning suit v lounge suit: BBC article

[Archivist]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13129837

Nothing like a royal wedding to get the media talking about the history of clothes. This is a nice precis on the history of two styles of men's dress.

 

[dasai]

The Manton quote doesn't hurt things, either.

 

[jrk264]

It's interesting how something we now consider over-the-top formal evolved from what were pretty much practical working clothes. Kind of makes me wonder whether blue jeans and a t-shirt will ever turn into formal dress.

OTOH, the evolution seems to be going the other way--there's a bit in Dressing the Man where Flusser mentions that dress shirts used to be considered underwear. Imagine what will show up in the 2085 equivalent--"there was a time in your grandfather's day when boxer shorts were considered to be underwear, not fit for display in polite company..."

 

[ShaneB]

Originally Posted by jrk264

It's interesting how something we now consider over-the-top formal evolved from what were pretty much practical working clothes. Kind of makes me wonder whether blue jeans and a t-shirt will ever turn into formal dress.

OTOH, the evolution seems to be going the other way--there's a bit in Dressing the Man where Flusser mentions that dress shirts used to be considered underwear. Imagine what will show up in the 2085 equivalent--"there was a time in your grandfather's day when boxer shorts were considered to be underwear, not fit for display in polite company..."

Jean and t-shirt? I doubt it because the two items look awful.

Morning coats, waistcoats and the like did derive from what could tentatively be called 'casual wear' or 'sportswear', but what facilitated its usurpation of more 'formal attire' (think Aristocratic breeches and court shoes, what we can now see as evening white tie dress) is that it looked good.

The Regency period is when tails and top-hats were the standard dress code and obviously that experienced a certain amount of transmutation going into the austere Victorian period - but remember, men were wearing lounge suits as standard attire right up until the 1950's (in England at least). It's degradation as standard attire is largely a story of its association with repressive and rather unwholesome values (David Cameron was reluctant to wear tails to the wedding because of its "˜negative associations'; various news stories told the tale of how tails was a relic of our "˜toffy-nosed past' - where did these associations come from? Why are they still so insidious even today?). It's actually a very complex topic; "˜ties' for example were considered by the haughty intellectuals of the Counter-Culture as symbolic of "˜slavery', hence the rebellion against it and its accompanied lounge suit in general. Ha! I blame everything on socialists but believe me, the story of why so many things that were considered the norm or considered convention, and how ultimately these things were relegated into the ether of negativity, is the story of the 1960's...

 

[Archivist]

HVAC Climate control systems have become very common, essentially ubiquitous in the industrialized world.
People like change.
Over the 20th Century, industries promoted change as a marketing tool.
Non-custom clothing has become extremely inexpensive and disposable.
The signifiers that the majority of people use in dress have changed drastically.

 

[dragon8]

"No one looked better in tails than Fred Astaire, who was short, wispy, and not particularly handsome."

Wow, tell us what you really think of him.

 

[Bounder]

Nicholas Antongiavanni, author of The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style and an article entitled Tailcoats: An Elegy. Kudos to Manton who is now, officially, an international expert. I wasn't aware of his tailcoat article. I will have to look it up.