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Other Men's Attire
A suit, with varieties such as a business suit, three-piece suit, lounge suit or two-piece suit, is a collection of matching clothing comprising: more...
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Women's Clothing
A coat (commonly known as a jacket);
A pair of matching trousers (BEn)/pants (AmEn), or a skirt for women.;
Optionally, a waistcoat (BEn)/vest (AmEn) (men only). A two-piece suit or lounge suit is one lacking a waistcoat; a three-piece suit has one.;
The term suit comes from the word "suivre" in French meaning "to follow". It relates to the fact that the trousers and waistcoat 'followed' the jacket in colour and material.
A suit is generally accompanied by a collared shirt and tie (for men), or a blouse (for women). A hat such as the fedora and the bowler (for men), or the pill box (for women), in Western countries, used to complete the outfit, but over the course of the 20th century they largely fell out of fashion and are no longer commonly worn with suits.
Men wear suits much more frequently than women. Women's suits, a later development than men's suits, are usually worn only in business settings. For other dressy occasions, women more frequently wear other styles of formal clothing.
History
Men's suits
The suit is the traditional form of male formal attire in the Western world. The modern suit did not appear until the mid nineteenth century, but the origins of its coat can be traced back to the revolution in men's dress set by Charles II, king of Great Britain in the 1660s. Charles, following the example of the court of Louis XIV at Versailles decreed in 1666 that at court, men were to wear a long coat or jacket, a waistcoat (originally called a petticoat, a term which later became applied solely to women's dress), a cravat (ancestor of the modern necktie) a wig, and breeches or trousers gathered at the knee, as well as a hat for outdoor wear. Coats with matching trousers or even waistcoat have gone in and out of fashion over the last four centuries however the modern lounge suit coat is still derived from historical coats. Although it is hard to see the outline of the modern business suit coat in the elaborate and brightly-coloured court dress of the seventeenth century, the basic pattern has survived for more than four hundred years with some adjustments, despite the abandonment of wigs and knee breeches after the French Revolution; the rise of British tailoring, which used steam, pressure, padding, and stiffening to mould woolen fabric to the body; the invention of the modern necktie in the late nineteenth century; and the gradual disappearance of waistcoats and hats during the last fifty years.
What we call the modern suit was originally a nineteenth-century English innovation in dress. It was originally usually referred to a lounge suit and was worn only in the country and at the seaside. At that time morning dress and frock coats were not part of a 'suit' because they are were usually worn with non-matching striped trousers, and having matching waistcoat and trousers was originally considered more informal. The term "ditto suit" was also transiently used early on due to the matching waistcoat and trousers, these sometimes having coats more resembling a frock coat or a morning coat. The "sack suit" is a North America derivative of the English lounge suit which looked even looser and more casual because it lacked darts. In the nineteenth century, when dressed more informally, men still wore morning dress as a more casual alternative to the formal frock coats then considered appropriate business and day time formalwear. The lounge suit was thus an even more casual form of dress and was reserved solely for recreation activities.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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