page_title: History of suits
section_title: Men's suits
hierarchical_section_title: History of suits / Men's suits
context_page_description: The man's suit of clothes, in the sense of a lounge or business or office suit, is a set of garments which are crafted from the same cloth.
context_section_description: The suit is a traditional form of men's formal clothes in the Western world. For some four hundred years, suits of matching coat, trousers, and waistcoat have been in and out of fashion. The modern lounge suit's derivation is visible in the outline of the brightly coloured, elaborately crafted royal court dress of the 17th century (suit, wig, knee breeches), which was shed because of the French Revolution.  This evolution is seen more recently in British tailoring's use of steam and padding in moulding woolen cloth, the rise and fall in popularity of the necktie, and the gradual disuse of waistcoats and hats in the last fifty years.
  The modern lounge suit appeared in the late 19th century, but traces its origins to the simplified, sartorial standard of dress established by the English king Charles II in the 17th century. In 1666, the restored monarch, Charles II, per the example of King Louis XIV's court at Versailles, decreed that in the English Court men would wear a long coat, a waistcoat (then called a "petticoat"), a cravat (a precursor of the necktie), a wig, knee breeches (trousers), and a hat. However, 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 informally in Holland, if not Western Europe as a whole. Many of Steen's genre paintings include men dressed in hip-length or frock coats with shirt and trousers, which in fact more closely resemble modern suit designs than the contemporary British standard.
caption: Johann Christian Fischer, composer, in matching coat, waistcoat, and breeches, by Thomas Gainsborough, ca. 1780.
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