page_title: History of suits
section_title: Victorian
hierarchical_section_title: History of suits / Men's suits / Victorian
caption_attribution_description: Taken by Flickr user mild_swearwords 2006-07-06 [1]. Edited by Daniel Case.
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: Towards the start of the Victorian period, the frock coat, initially not just black, became popular, and quickly became the standard daily clothing for gentlemen.  From the middle of the 19th century, a new (then informal) coat, the morning coat, became acceptable.  It was a less formal garment, with a cut away front, making it suitable for wearing while riding. Morning dress and the frock coat garments were not suits, because they were worn with trousers that didn't match in color or fabric; a matching waistcoat and trousers were considered informal and could be described using the short-lived term ditto suit.  The frock coat was still the standard garment for all formal or business occasions, and a tailcoat was worn in the evenings.
  Towards the end of the 19th century, the modern lounge suit was born as a very informal garment meant only to be worn for sports, in the country, or at the seaside.
  Parallel to this, the dinner jacket was invented and came to be worn for informal evening events. It was descended from white tie (the dress code associated with the evening tailcoat) but quickly became a full new garment, the dinner jacket, with a new dress code, initially known as 'dress lounge' and later black tie. When it was imported to the United States, it became known as the tuxedo. The 'dress lounge' was originally worn only for small private gatherings and white tie ('White tie and tails') was still worn for large formal events. The 'dress lounge' slowly became more popular for larger events as an alternative to full evening dress in white tie.
caption: Three men in 2006 wearing black tie variations.
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