The Suit: Form, Function and Style (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781780235233)

A beautifully tailored history of this fashion staple--at once a garment of tradition, power, and subversion.

The Suit unpicks the story of this most familiar garment, from its emergence in western Europe at the end of the seventeenth century to today. Suit-wearing figures such as the Savile Row gentleman and the Wall Street businessman have long embodied ideas of tradition, masculinity, power, and respectability, but the suit has also been used to disrupt concepts of gender and conformity. Adopted and subverted by women, artists, musicians, and social revolutionaries through the decades--from dandies and Sapeurs to the Zoot Suit and Le Smoking--the suit is also a device for challenging the status quo. For all those interested in the history of menswear, this beautifully illustrated book offers new perspectives on this most mundane, and poetic, product of modern culture.

Author: Christopher Breward
ISBN-10: 1780235232
ISBN-13: 9781780235233
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Language: English
Published: 04/15/2016
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.90lbs
Size: 9.60h x 6.50w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 04/15/2016 pg. 93