A brief history lesson on the origin of the suit

1700s

The suit’s origins lie in the court dress of Britain. Until the mid-17th century, laws prevented common people from wearing certain colours (like the royal purple), fine furs and trimmings including velvet and satin. These were reserved for nobles and sometimes the royal family alone. However, around 1660 after an outbreak of the plague, King Charles II ordered his noblemen to dress more modestly to ease tensions between the classes. They began wearing office colours like navy, grey and taupe and soon this simple jacket, shirt and pant combination gained interest among the upper class merchants and aristocrats.


 

1800s

It wasn’t until the 18th century that this gentleman’s dress code went through another transformation. From the tailored garments of the upper class evolved the morning suit - a prequel to the tuxedo. Back then considered more casual, it is still used today in weddings and other formal occasions. Then came the tuxedo: first seen on the Prince of Wales who ordered a tailless morning coat from Henry Poole’s on London’sSavile Row. By the late 1800s, the upper class were using it for more casual evening occasions.

 
 

1900s

From this point on, the suit as we know it was born. It’s not clear exactly who had the idea for the modern suit or what it was designed for, but the first one appeared in the 19th century. It quickly became both a casual garment for the elite and a dress-up item for the working class. The morning suit and tailcoat soon lost interest among the upper classes across Europe and the US. 

 
 
 

2000s

Although fit was more important than ever, this was far from the suit you are wearing today. It took another century for tailors to make the changes here and there that helped perfect the construction, fit and look of a suit. Eventually, a combination of military, medical and sporting details helped form what we recognise today as the men’s dress suit. Working buttonholes owe their heritage to the needs of surgeons. Padded shoulders trace back to the traditional military uniforms that were made to look best when a man is standing. Even centre or side vents on a modern suit were born from function, cut in such a way that helped a gentleman ride a horse.

A brief history of suit manufacturing

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  • 1700s

    • Before the arrival of sewing machines in the late 18th century, all clothes were cut and sewn by hand, similar to the way bespoke tailors work today. A jacket was constructed with canvas to reinforce the front and mould it to the shape of the body. Canvas was usually woven from a combination of animal hairs (horse, camel and goat) and natural fibres (like cottons and linens). Around that time, tailors started to create cutting systems. In 1790, these cutting systems in combination with the invention of the sewing machine changed the process of garment construction forever.

  • 1800s

    • By 1830, the first machine-based clothing manufacturer opened in France to supplyuniforms to the French army. Civilian clothing manufacturers followed soon after. These manufacturers were able to mass-produce garments and so ‘ready-made’ or ‘off the rack’ clothing was introduced to the world.

  • 1900s

    • It was a full 100 years on, at the beginning of the 1900s, when ready-to-wear production was finally adopted for suits, due to their complex manufacturing process. The British School of Tailoring was traditionally very military-inspired.

  • 1930s

    • This changed in the 1930s when Savile Row tailors developed a softer tailoring style – with less shoulder padding and lighter canvas. Due to work migration, Italians were traveling to work in the bespoke workshops of London, where they learned the English style of the craft. Southern Italian tailors from Naples were inspired by the new English school and took it even further. They removed most of the canvas, shoulder padding and lining of a jacket, giving us the unconstructed and unlined jackets we know today.

  • 1950s

    • From the 1950s onwards, ready-to-wear clothiers began to emerge. In Italy, they kept the traditional methods of manufacturing with canvas and hand finished garments. While in History Germany, a fundamental change occurred when fused non-woven interlining was invented. Up until then, a jacket was constructed with canvas as interlining, hand stitched to the garment. In a fused jacket, heat is used to glue the interlining to the inside of the garment. Unsurprisingly, this was less expensive to use than canvas and saved time in production. Gradually, the new fused construction was used more often, though it resulted in a much stiffer garment. Some clothiers chose to fuse only the front of the jacket and use canvas in the chest area – this is how the half-canvas construction was born.