page_title: Tailcoat
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tailcoat / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Major General Winfield Scott at Vera Cruz, March 25, 1847. Copy of lithograph by Nathaniel Currier, 1847. NARA FILE #: 111-SC-496992 WAR &amp; CONFLICT BOOK #: 102.
context_page_description: A tailcoat is a knee-length coat characterised by a rear section of the skirt, known as the tails, with the front of the skirt cut away.
  The tailcoat shares its historical origins in clothes cut for convenient horse riding in the Early Modern era. Ever since the 18th century, however, tailcoats evolved into general forms of day and evening formal wear, in parallel to how the lounge suit succeeded the frock coat and the justacorps.
  Thus, in 21st-century Western dress codes for men, mainly two types of tailcoats have survived:
  Dress coat, an evening wear with a squarely cut away front, worn for formal white tie
  Morning coat, a day wear with a gradually tapered front cut away, worn for formal morning dress
  In colloquial language without further specification, "tailcoat" typically designates the former, that is the evening dress coat for white tie.
caption: Winfield Scott wearing a tailcoat at the Battle of Veracruz
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