Since the 1960s most suits left the tailor for the rack
A lounge or business suit matches jacket and trousers in one cloth, usually with dress shirt, tie and shoes. Two-piece or three-piece, single- or double-breasted cuts vary. Bespoke measuring once ruled; from the 1960s onward ready-to-wear mass production took most of the market.
The word comes from French suite, a following, from the Latin verb meaning I follow, because jacket, trousers and waistcoat follow one another in the same cloth and are worn as a set. When the lounge suit appeared it was actually the relaxed choice, a step down from what aristocrats and businessmen normally wore; only later did it become business or semi-formal wear. Likewise the tuxedo and the black lounge stroller began as easier alternatives to white tie with its dress coat and to morning dress.
The ancestry runs back to Charles II, who in the 17th century, following Louis XIV's Versailles, ordered English courtiers into a set outfit of long coat, knee breeches, hat, wig, cravat and a waistcoat known at the time as a petticoat; Dutch Golden Age paintings suggest the combination was already familiar in Holland. The Great Male Renunciation of the late 18th century stripped away embroidery and jewels in favour of plainer Regency dress, which hardened into Victorian severity before a late-19th-century hunger for comfort produced the lounge suit. Brooks Brothers is credited with the first ready-to-wear suit, and Haggar introduced suit separates in America.
Tailoring styles differ from the heavily padded, military-flavoured British cut to the softer Neapolitan approach, while the American sack suit skips darts for a straighter, looser line. Double-breasted jackets overlap with two columns of buttons; single-breasted ones meet in the middle. A bespoke suit involves at least one basted fitting in a half-made coat and can absorb 80 hours of a tailor's time, whereas made to measure adapts an existing pattern.
Most suits are wool, silk or cotton, woven from combed worsted or fluffier woollen yarns into flannel, tweed, gabardine or fresco, with Super numbers grading fibre fineness. Business colours centre on black, light and dark grey and navy, and grey flannel has been ubiquitous since the 1930s. Around 1900 plain black was kept for formal wear and mourning, returning to everyday suits only after the 1960s.
Source: Suit
