A suit is a set of clothes comprising a suit jacket, or coat, and trousers. When of identical textile, and worn with a collared dress shirt, necktie, and dress shoes, it was traditionally considered informal wear in Western dress codes. The lounge suit originated in 19th-century Britain as more casual wear alternative for sportswear and British country clothing. After replacing the black frock coat in the early 20th century as regular daywear, a sober one-coloured suit became known as a lounge suit. A darker, understated lounge suit for professional occasions became known as a business suit.
Suits are offered in different designs and constructions. Cut, and cloth, whether two- or three-piece, single- or double-breasted, vary, in addition to various accessories. A two-piece suit has a jacket and trousers, a three-piece suit adds a waistcoat. Hats were almost always worn outdoors (and sometimes indoors) with all men’s clothes until the counterculture of the 1960s in Western culture. Informal suits have been traditionally worn with a fedora, a trilby, or a flat cap. Other accessories include handkerchief, suspenders or belt, watch, and jewelry.
Other notable types of suits are for semi-formal occasions dinner suit (black tie) and the black lounge suit (stroller), both which arose as less formal alternatives for the formal wear of the dress coat for white tie, and the morning coat with formal trousers for morning dress, respectively.
Originally, suits were always tailor-made from the client’s selected cloth. These are now known as bespoke suits, custom-made to measurements, taste, and style preferences. Since the 1960s, most suits are mass-produced ready-to-wear garments. Currently, suits are offered in roughly four ways:
⦁ bespoke, in which the garment is custom-made by a tailor from a pattern created entirely from the customer’s measurements, giving the best fit and free choice of fabric;
⦁ made to measure, in which a pre-made pattern is modified to fit the customer, and a limited selection of options and fabrics is available;
⦁ ready-to-wear, off-the-peg or off-the-rack, which is sold as is, although some tailor alteration tends to be required;
⦁ suit separates where lounge jacket and trousers are sold separately in order to minimize alterations needed, including also odd-coloured blazers or sports coats as smart casual options.
Suit-wearing etiquette
Double-breasted suit coats are almost always kept buttoned. When there is more than one functional buttonhole (as in a traditional six-on-two arrangement), only one button need be fastened; the wearer may elect to fasten only the bottom button, in order to present a longer line.
Single-breasted suit coats may be either fastened or unfastened. In two-button suits the bottom button is traditionally left unfastened except with certain unusual cuts of jacket.
When fastening a three-button suit, the middle button is fastened, and the top one sometimes, but the bottom is traditionally not designed to be. Although in the past some three-button jackets were cut so that all three could be fastened without distorting the drape, this is not the case. A four-button suit is nontraditional and uncommon.
The one button suit has regained some popularity. With a single-breasted suit, the buttons are usually unfastened while sitting down to avoid an ugly drape. A double-breasted suit is often able to be left buttoned, to avoid the difficulty of constantly redoing the inner button (the “anchor button”) when standing up.
Suit-wearing etiquette for women generally follows the same guidelines used by men, with a few differences and more flexibility.
For women, the skirt suit or dress suit are both acceptable; a blouse, which can be white or coloured, usually takes the place of a shirt. Women’s suits can also be worn with coloured tops or T-shirts. Also, women usually wear suits in professional settings, rather than as general formal attire, as men do.
Women’s suits come in a larger variety of colours such as darks, pastels, and gem colours.
Women generally do not always wear neckties with their suits but some do. Fancy silk scarves that resemble a floppy ascot tie became popular in North America in the 1970s. By the 1980s, women were entering the white-collar workforce in increasing numbers and their dress fashions adopted looks not dissimilar from men’s business wear. By the early to mid-1980s, conservatively-tailored skirt suits were the norm, in the same colours and fabrics considered standard in men’s suits. These were typically worn with buttoned-up collared blouses, usually white or some pastel in colour. These were frequently accessorised with a version of the bow tie, usually the same fabrics, colours, and patterns as men’s neckties and bow ties, but tied in a fuller bow at the collar. Pantyhose are worn with the skirt suit in Black, Nude or White.