Suit
A suit, also called a lounge suit, business suit, dress suit, or formal suit, is a set of clothes comprising a suit jacket and trousers of identical textiles generally worn with a collared dress shirt, necktie, and dress shoes. A skirt suit is similar, but with a matching pencil skirt instead of trousers. It is currently considered semi-formal wear or business wear in contemporary Western dress codes; however, when the suit was originally developed it was considered an informal or more casual option compared to the prevailing clothing standards of aristocrats and businessmen. The lounge suit originated in 19th-century Britain as sportswear and British country clothing, which is why it was seen as more casual than citywear at that time, with the roots of the suit coming from early modern Western Europe formal court or military clothes. After replacing the black frock coat in the early 20th century as regular daywear, a sober one-coloured suit became known as a lounge suit.
Suits are offered in different designs and constructions. Cut and cloth, whether two- or three-piece, single- or double-breasted, vary, in addition to various accessories. A two-piece suit has a jacket and trousers; a three-piece suit adds a waistcoat. Hats were almost always worn outdoors with all men's clothes until the counterculture of the 1960s in Western culture. Informal suits have been traditionally worn with a fedora, a trilby, or a flat cap. Other accessories include handkerchief, suspenders or belt, watch, and jewelry.
Other notable types of suits are for what would now be considered formal occasions—the tuxedo or dinner suit and the black lounge suit —both which originally arose as less formal alternatives for the prior formal wear standards known as white tie, which incorporated items such as the dress coat, and of morning dress, which incorporated items such as the morning coat with formal trousers.
Originally, suits were always tailor-made from the client's selected cloth. These are now known as bespoke suits, custom-made to measurements, taste, and style preferences. Since the 1960s, most suits have been mass-produced ready-to-wear garments. Currently, suits are offered in roughly four ways:
- bespoke, in which the garment is custom-made by a tailor from a pattern created entirely from the customer's measurements, giving the best fit and free choice of fabric;
- made to measure, in which a pre-made pattern is modified to fit the customer, and a limited selection of options and fabrics is available;
- ready-to-wear, off-the-peg, or off-the-rack, sold ready-made, although minor tailor alterations are possible;
- suit separates, where lounge jacket and trousers are sold separately in order to minimize alterations needed, including also odd-colored blazers or sports coats as smart casual options
Terminology
History
The suit's origins trace the simplified, sartorial standard established by the English king Charles II in the 17th century, following the example of his one-time host King Louis XIV's court at Versailles, who decreed that in the English Court men would wear a long coat, a waistcoat, a cravat, a wig, knee breeches, and a hat. The paintings of Jan Steen, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and other painters of the Dutch Golden Era reveal that such an arrangement was already used in Holland, if not Western Europe as a whole.The current styles, founded in the Great Male Renunciation of the late 18th century, sharply changed the elaborately embroidered and jewelled formal clothing into the simpler clothing of the British Regency period, which gradually evolved to the stark formality of the Victorian era. In the late 19th century, it was in the search for more comfort that the loosening of rules gave rise to the modern lounge suit.
Brooks Brothers is generally credited with first offering the "ready-to-wear" suit, a suit that was sold already manufactured and sized, ready to be tailored, while Haggar Clothing first introduced the concept of suit separates in the U.S., which are widely found in the marketplace today.
Elements
There are many possible variations in the choice of the style, the garments, and the details of a suit.Cut
The silhouette of a suit is its outline. Tailored balance created from a canvas fitting allows a balanced silhouette so a jacket need not be buttoned and a garment is not too tight or too loose. A proper garment is shaped from the neck to the chest and shoulders to drape without wrinkles from tension. Shape is the essential part of tailoring that often takes hand work from the start. The two main cuts are double-breasted suits, a conservative design with two columns of buttons, spanned by a large overlap of the left and right sides; and single-breasted suits, in which the sides meet in the centre of the torso with a single column of buttons, overlapping only enough for one, two or three buttons to close, with by convention the jacket front cut so that the lowest button is not designed to close.Different styles of tailoring create different silhouettes, from the heavily padded military-inspired cut of traditional British tailors, to the less structured Neopolitan style. An essential part of this profile shaping is the inclusion of darts, reductions of fabric which allow for the coat to have a stronger shape. For example, the American sack suit does not feature pleats, which creates a straighter and looser fit.
There are three ways to buy suits:
- Ready-made and altered "sizes" or precut patterns, a convenience that often is expressed over time with wrinkles from poor shaping, leading to distortion;
- The made-to-measure suit, in which a pre-existing pattern is altered to reflect the individual's preference or nuances of physique to achieve things like the style, lengths, shoulder slope and point-to-point and trouser fitting;
- The custom, bespoke, or tailoring-designed suit, which has at least one basted fitting in which a half-made coat is worn by the client in order to let the tailor readjust the pattern several times before finishing the garment. This process can take the tailor easily 80 hours.
Fabric
Suits are made in a variety of fabrics, but most commonly from wool, silk or cotton. The two main yarns produce worsteds and woollens. These can be woven in a number of ways, producing flannel, tweed, gabardine, and fresco among others. These fabrics all have different weights and feels, and some fabrics have an S number describing the fineness of the fibres measured by average fibre diameter, e.g., Super 120; the finer the fabric, the more delicate and thus less likely to be long-wearing it will be. Although wool has traditionally been associated with warm, bulky clothing meant for warding off cold weather, advances in making finer and finer fibre have made wool suits acceptable for warmer weather, as fabrics have accordingly become lighter and more supple. Wool fabric is denominated by the weight of a one-square yard piece; thus, the heavier wools, suitable for winter only, are 12–14 oz.; the medium, "three-season" are 10–11 oz.; and summer wools are 7–8 oz. Other materials are used sometimes, either alone or blended with wool, such as cashmere. Silk alone or blended with wool is sometimes used. Synthetic materials, e.g., polyester, while cheaper, are very rarely recommended by experts. At most, a blend of predominantly wool may be acceptable to obtain the main benefit of synthetics, namely resistance to wrinkling, particularly in garments used for travel; however, any synthetic, blended or otherwise, will always be warmer and clammier than wool alone. For hot weather, linen is also used, and in the Southern United States, cotton seersucker is worn.The main four colours for suits worn in business are black, light grey, dark grey, and navy, either with or without patterns. In particular, grey flannel suiting has been worn very widely since the 1930s. In non-business settings or less-formal business contexts, brown is another important colour; olive also occurs. In summer, lighter shades such as tan or cream are popular.
For non-business use, tweed has been popular since Victorian times and still is commonly worn. A wide range of colour is available, including muted shades of green, brown, red, and grey. Tweeds are usually checked, or plain with a herringbone weave, and are most associated with the country. While full tweed suits are not worn by many now, the jackets are often worn as sports jackets with odd trousers.
The most conventional suit has two or three buttons and is either medium-to-dark grey or navy. Other conservative colours are grey, black, and olive. White and light blues are acceptable at some events, especially in the warm season. Red and the brighter greens are usually considered "unconventional" and "garish". Tradition calls for a gentleman's suit to be of decidedly plain colour, with splashes of bright colour reserved for shirts, neckties or kerchiefs.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, around the start of the 20th century, lounge suits were never traditionally worn in plain black, this colour instead being reserved for formal wear and for undertakers. However, the decline of formal wear since the 1950s and the rise of casual wear in 1960s allowed the black suit to return to fashion, as many designers began wanting to move away from the business suit toward more fashion suits.
Traditional business suits are generally in solid colours or with pinstripes; windowpane checks are also acceptable. Outside business, the range of acceptable patterns widens, with plaids such as the traditional glen plaid and herringbone, though apart from some very traditional environments such as London banking, these are worn for business now, as well. The colour of the patterned element varies by gender and location. For example, bold checks, particularly with tweeds, have fallen out of use in the US, while they continue to be worn as traditional in Britain. Some unusual old patterns such as diamonds are now rare everywhere.
Inside the jacket of a suit, between the outer fabric and the inner lining, there is a layer of sturdy interfacing fabric to prevent the wool from stretching out of shape; this layer of cloth is called the canvas after the fabric from which it was traditionally made. Expensive jackets have a floating canvas, while cheaply manufactured models have a fused canvas. A fused canvas is less soft and, if poorly done, damages the suppleness and durability of the jacket, so many tailors are quick to deride fused canvas as being less durable, particularly since they may tend to permanently pucker along the jacket's edges after some use or a few dry cleanings. However, some selling this type of jacket claim that the difference in quality is very small. A few London tailors state that all bespoke suits should use a floating canvas.