Lydia Edwards - How to Read a Suit: A Guide to Changing Men’s Fashion from the 17th to the 20th Century

Atwater, A.J. by C.M. Bell, c.18731890, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Acknowledgments

This book would not have come together half as happily as it did without the support of some wonderful people. My thanks first go to my editor, Frances Arnold, for her endless advice, encouragement, and belief in me. Yvonne Thouroude has also been wonderfully helpful and supportive and put up admirably with my stream of questions!

Dr. Karin Bohleke, of the Fashion Archives & Museum at Shippensburg University, has given her time and expertise with extraordinary generosity. Many of the beautiful nineteenth-and twentieth-century photographs in this book are from her personal collection and are reproduced here with generous permission. Along with Annika Neilson-Dowd, Karin made the selection and delivery of my Fashion Archives suits easy, stress-free, and lots of fun.

Many museums and historical societies have offered invaluable assistance, and I am grateful to several for their unrestricted access: in particular, the Rijksmuseum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and the National Gallery of Victoria. I also appreciate the individual advice and generosity of Allison Tolman from the Maryland Historical Society, Matt Jacobsen of oldmagazinarticles.com, and to the following for their permission to use treasured family photographs: Maureen and Leon Levy, Anna Hueppauff and the Tsoulis family, Brett Smyth, Daniela Ksting, Gary Wright, and Clare Simmonds.

As ever, love and thanks to my oldest friend Romanie Garcia-Lee for her professional advice as well as personal interest and support. Other dear friends who more than deserve a special mention are Louise Hughes, Nina Levy, Anna Hueppauff, and Tina Moss. Id also like to thank my UniPrep family at Edith Cowan University and Fleur Kingsland at WAAPA.

My parents, Chris and Julia, have encouraged and supported me throughout my life, and the writing of this book has been no exception. Extra thanks to my dad for such precise editing and proofreading!

Most of all, thanks to my husband Aaron, whose support, encouragement, and humour give me confidence in my writing and research.

Finally, my appreciation to everyone who read and enjoyed How to Read a Dress. I hope you find this new book interesting and informative.

Preface

Before the Suit

Long before the birth of the three-piece suit, notions of masculinity were deeply rooted in clothing. Of course, the idea of measuring historic masculinity is in the first place highly problematic, as Michael Antony puts it: How can we possibly measure the masculinity of another age? We cannot measure the sperm counts or testosterone levels of the sixteenth century or the eighteenth. Perhaps not, but as he continues, we can use art and literature to compare how the appearance and manners of men and women have changed over the centuries. Fashion is one of the most important indicators of how men constructed their own sense of what it meant to be a man, and of how women perceived an ideal manly figure. Works of art (and sometimes, extant garments) give us the best chance we can hope for of uncovering more and creating a contemporary framework of understanding. This brief background will provide an outline of western European masculine clothing in the century and a half leading up to the birth of the modern three-piece suit. The aim is not to give a comprehensive overview, but to allow a comparative vision of how masculinity was sartorially constructed in the immediate preamble to the birth of the modern suit. It will also include four initial analyses of doublet, hose, and breeches in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

On the face of it, mens fashions from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries seem far more complex and elaborate than the suit, particularly its nineteenth- to twenty-first-century incarnation. In