A suit is a set of garments made from the same cloth, usually consisting of at least a jacket and trousers. Lounge suits (also known as business suits when sober in colour and style), which originated in Britain as country wear, are the most common style of Western suit. Other types of suit still worn today are the dinner suit, part of black tie, which arose as a lounging alternative to dress coats in much the same way as the day lounge suit came to replace frock coats and morning coats; and, rarely worn today, the morning suit. This article discusses the lounge suit (including business suits), elements of informal dress code.
The variations in design, cut, and cloth, such as two- and three- piece, or single- and double- breasted, determine the social and work suitability of the garment. Often, suits are worn, as is traditional, with a collared shirt and necktie. Until around the 1960s, as with all men's clothes, a hat would have been also worn when the wearer was outdoors. Suits also come with different numbers of pieces: a two-piece suit has a jacket and the trousers; a three piece adds a waistcoat; further pieces might include a matching flat cap.
History
The current styles were founded in the revolution during the early 19th century that sharply changed the elaborately embroidered and jewelled formal clothing into the simpler clothing of the British Regency period, which gradually evolved to the stark formality of the Victorian era. It was in the search for more comfort that the loosening of rules gave rise in the late 19th century to the modern lounge suit.
Etymology
The word suit derives from the French suite,meaning "following", from some Late Latin derivative form of the Latin verb sequor = "I follow", because the component garments (jacket and trousers and waistcoat) follow each other and have the same cloth and colour and are worn together.
As a suit (in this sense) covers all or most of the wearer's body, the term "suit" was extended to a single garment that covers all or most of the body, such as boilersuits and diving suits and spacesuits (see Suit (disambiguation)).
Parts of a suit
There are many possible variations in the choice of the style, the garments and the details of a suit.
The cut
The silhouette of a suit is its outline. Tailored balance created from a canvas fitting allows a balanced silhouette so a jacket need not be buttoned and a garment is not too tight or too loose. A proper garment is shaped from the neck to the chest and shoulders to drape without wrinkles from tension. Shape is the essential part of tailoring that often takes hand work from the start. The two main cuts are 1) double-breasted suits, a conservative design with two vertical rows of buttons, spanned by a large overlap of the left and right sides; and 2) single-breasted suits, in which the sides overlap very slightly, with a single row of buttons.
Good tailoring anywhere in the world is characterised by strongly tapered sides and minimal shoulder, whereas often rack suits are padded to reduce labour. More casual suits are characterized by less construction and tailoring, much like the sack suit is a loose American style.
There are 3 ways to make suits. Ready made and altered "sizes" or pre cut shapes; a convenience that often is expressed over time with wrinkles from poor shaping, leading to distortion; The made to measure that uses measurements, not shaping, to achieve things like style, lengths and horizontal measurements; The custom, bespoke or tailoring-designed suit that has interim half-made fittings and is cut from an actual personal pattern.
The acid test of authentic tailoring standards is the wrinkle that comes from poor tailoring. Rumples can be pressed out. for interim fittings, "Rock Of Eye" (which means trained freehand based on an experienced artistic eye to match the item to the wearer, trusting the eye over unyielding scripted approach), drawing and cutting inaccuracies are overcome by the fitting.
Fabric
Suits are made in a variety of fabrics, but most commonly from wool. The two main yarns produce worsteds (where the fibres are combed before spinning) and woollens (where they are not). These can be woven in a number of ways producing flannel, tweed, gabardine, and fresco among others. These fabrics all have different weights and feel, and some fabrics have an S (or Super S) number describing the fineness of the fibres. Although wool has traditionally been associated with warm, bulky clothing meant for warding off cold weather, advances in making finer and finer fiber have made wool suits acceptable for warmer weather, as fabrics have accordingly become lighter and more supple. For hot weather, linen is also used, and in (Southern) North America cotton seersucker is worn. Other materials are used sometimes, such as cashmere.[7] Silk and silk blended with wool are sometimes used. Synthetic materials, while cheap, are very rarely recommended by experts.
The main four colours for suits worn in business are black, light grey, dark grey, and navy, either with or without patterns. In particular, grey flannel suiting has been worn very widely since the 1930s. In non-business settings or less-formal business contexts, brown is another important colour; olive also occurs. In summer, lighter shades such as tan or cream are popular.
For non-business use tweed has been popular since Victorian times, and still is commonly worn. A wide range of colour is available, including muted shades of green, brown, red, and grey.[10] Tweeds are usually checked, or plain with a herringbone weave, and are most associated with the country. While full tweed suits are not worn by many now, the jackets are often worn as sports jackets with odd trousers (trousers of different cloth).
The most conventional suit is a 2- or 3-button and either medium to dark grey or navy. Other conservative colors are greys, black, and olive. White and light blues are acceptable at some events, especially in the warm season. Red is usually considered "unconventional" and "garish". Tradition calls for a gentleman's suit to be of decidedly plain color, with splashes of bright color reserved for shirts, neckties or kerchiefs.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, around the start of the 20th century, lounge suits were never traditionally worn in plain black, this colour instead being reserved for formal wear (including dinner jackets or strollers), and for undertakers. However, the decline of formal wear since the 1950s and the rise of casual wear in 1960s allowed the black suit to return to fashion as many designers started to want to move away from the business suit and into more fashion suits.
Traditional business suits are generally in solid colours or with pin stripes; windowpane checks are also acceptable. Outside business, the range of acceptable patterns widens, with plaids such as the traditional glen plaid and herringbone, though apart from some very traditional environments such as London banking, these are worn for business now too. The colour of the patterned element (stripes, plaids, and checks) varies by gender and location. For example, bold checks, particularly with tweeds, have fallen out of use in America, while they continue to be worn as traditionally in Britain. Some unusual old patterns such as diamonds are now rare everywhere.
Inside the jacket of a suit, between the outer fabric and the inner lining, there is a layer of sturdy interfacing fabric to prevent the wool from stretching out of shape; this layer of cloth is called the canvas after the fabric from which it was traditionally made. Expensive jackets have a floating canvas, while cheaply manufactured models have a fused (glued) canvas. A fused canvas is less soft and, if poorly done, damages the suppleness and durability of the jacket,so many tailors are quick to deride fused canvas as being less durable.However, some selling this type of jacket claim that the difference in quality is very small.A few London tailors state that all bespoke suits should use a floating canvas.In June 2008, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), a British advertising regulator, ruled otherwise, citing the Oxford English Dictionary definition of bespoke as "made to order".
