num_pages: 256
description: A beautifully tailored history of this fashion stapleat once a garment of tradition power and subversion. The Suit unpicks the story of this most familiar garment from its emergence in western Europe at the end of the seventeenth century to today. Suit-wearing figures such as the Savile Row gentleman and the Wall Street businessman have long embodied ideas of tradition masculinity power and respectability but the suit has also been used to disrupt concepts of gender and conformity. Adopted and subverted by women artists musicians and social revolutionaries through the decadesfrom dandies and Sapeurs to the Zoot Suit and Le Smokingthe suit is also a device for challenging the status quo. For all those interested in the history of menswear this beautifully illustrated book offers new perspectives on this most mundane and poetic product of modern culture.
language: English
title: The Suit: Form, Function and Style
publisher: Reaktion Books