page_title: Tailcoat
section_title: Dress coat
hierarchical_section_title: Tailcoat / Dress coat
caption_attribution_description: Caricature of Mr John Delacour (1841-??), Member of the Marlborough Club, horseracing enthusiast.
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.
context_section_description: A dress coat, sometimes called a swallow-tail or claw-hammer coat, is the coat that has, since the 1850s, come to be worn only in the evening by men as part of the white tie dress code, also known as evening full dress, for formal evening occasions. It is commonly referred to as just a tailcoat, but amongst tailors (both British and American) and dress historians it is traditionally called a dress coat to differentiate it from other types of tailcoats.
  The modern dress coat is an evolution of the coat that was once both day and evening dress. It became increasingly popular from around the late 1790s and was particularly widespread during the British Regency, and in America in the 1830s to 1850s. The eighteenth-century dress coat was supplanted in the 1850s as formal day wear by the frock coat, which was in turn replaced in the twentieth century by the morning coat. In the Regency period, the dress coat with gilt buttons was always worn with non-matching trousers, pantaloons or breeches. Since the Victorian era, the modern dress coat for evening wear has been worn with matching trousers of the same cloth with two stripes of braiding down the side. The resulting suit is traditionally referred to by tailors as a dress suit.
  A dress coat is waist length in the front and sides, and has two long tails reaching to the knees in back. Sometimes there is a pocket on the inside to hold gloves. Since around the 1840s the dress coat has lacked outside side pockets, but prior to this it took flapped side pockets. Since the early twentieth century, it has become acceptable to have a welted pocket on the outside of the chest to hold a pocket square, but prior to this dress coats lacked any outer pockets. The front of the skirt is squarely cut away. Since around the 1830s the coat has been constructed with a waist seam that allows greater waist suppression. From the Victorian era, the revers has taken facings in silk (grosgrain or satin) on the lapels. Although it is double-breasted, since the 1870s, the dress coat no longer fastens in the front. As a result, although there are two rows of buttons, these are all non-functional, serving only a decorative function.
  As part of modern white tie, either a black dress coat is worn with a stiff detachable white wing-collar dress shirt, with a plain starched pique bib, and single cuffs fastened with cufflinks; a matching white marcella cotton bowtie and white waistcoat; black trousers; and black patent leather pumps with stockings. Additionally, a top hat, silk dress scarf, and white dress gloves are also seen as acceptable.
caption: Caricature of Mr John Delacour (19th century) wearing dress coat with top hat for white tie.
exif: {}