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For over 400 years the tailored suit has dominated the wardrobe. Its simple forms, inspired by royal, military, religious and professional clothing, have provided a functional and sometimes elegant uniform for modern life. We see it every day - on the street, in the ofce, at moments of celebration, ceremony and crisis - but whether its custom-made or mass-produced, its complex construction, symbolic power and shifting meanings are often taken for granted.
In The Suit Christopher Breward unpicks the story of our most familiar garment. He shows how its emergence in Western Europe at the end of the seventeenth century reected political rivalries and the rise of democratic society. New technologies of measuring the body and constructing clothing for it produced an ideal template for modern fashion. Breward also traces the precedents and adaptations of the suit in South and East Asia, questioning its status as a symbol of Western civilization.
Beyond its role as a badge of respectability and service to state and commerce, the suit is a device for subverting the status quo. Artists, musicians and social revolutionaries have adapted the rules of suit-wearing to provoke and undermine. Breward describes its adoption by women and its usefulness as an index of character in painting, photography and lm. And nally, at a moment when suit-wearing appears to be on the decline, will it survive in the twenty-rst century and in the human imagination?
Beautifully illustrated and written with authority, The Suit offers new perspectives on this most mundane, and poetic, product of modern culture.
About the author
Christopher Breward is Director, National Museums Scotland. He is the author of The Hidden Consumer (1999), Fashion (2003) and Fashioning London (2004).
Summary
Beautifully illustrated and written with authority, Suit offers new perspectives on this most mundane, and at the same time poetic and beautiful, product of modern culture.
