The most common ready to wear man's suit style is notch lapelled, with a two button front and side pockets with flaps. That is roughly mid-way along the jacket formality scale.
Generally, the closer a jacket's styling is to that of men's evening clothes, the more formal it is (as we will see later, cloth is significantly less of a factor). That places a single breasted jacket with a single button, peak lapels and jetted pockets without flaps at the top of the formality pyramid.
By this logic, a double breasted suit jacket with the same detailing is not quite as formal as a single breasted, for double breasted dinner jackets were introduced as less formal versions of their single breasted forebears.
Descending the formality scale, notched lapels on a single breasted jacket are less formal then peak. From there, the more complex the detailing the more casual the effect. So flapped pockets are less formal than flapless and patch side pockets even less so; add a patch breast pocket and formality declines further. Put flaps on those patches and we are as casual as casual can be.
Something similar holds true for other stuff. More buttons are less formal than fewer. Swelled lapel seams are less formal than plain, and features that originated in hunting jackets such as belts and shoulder pleats are the least formal of all.
All of this leads up to the conclusion that details are more important to a jacket's formality than cloth because it was not uncommon for pre-War style leaders to combine less formal cloth with more formal details in their city suits (though never the reverse). In the illustration, the late British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden walks through the Place Vendôme wearing a suit of relatively formal design made of a fairly informal checked flannel cloth.
If not proof, then certainly a strong indication that jacket formality is principally in the details.
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14 comments:
So, are patch pockets the exception to the idea that more detail suggests greater formality?
I tried to say just the opposite:
"the more complex the detailing the more casual the effect."
"By this logic, a double breasted suit jacket with the same detailing is not quite as formal as a single breasted,"
Not sure I buy this Will nor the notion that the formality of day wear is driven by evening dress. They've always been regarded as something different since the disappearance of knee britches.
The DB owes its origins to the Frock coat long the most formal item of daywear. In the frock coat's heyday men were wearing the entirely different white tie and tails in the evening firstly with fancy waistcoats and then all white. The frock coat clung on until the 20's when George V was about the last regular wearer although I've seen photos of Duff Cooper in one at a fifties wedding. The single breasted jacket with peaked lapels is really the natural successor to the morning tailcoat just as the dinner jacket is the successor to the evening tailcoat. Thus the DB suit with peaked lapels is top of the formality pile for daywear with the single with peaks in second position. Don't you love these arcane disputes?
That's interesting. I've noticed a trend toward putting peak lapels on SB odd jackets and suits the last couple of seasons and had ascribed it to merely a fashionable "trend". In light of your post, do you think that it is due to this or more of a nod toward more formality as you note. As an example, I've seen peak lapels on some of the Cuccinelli & Kiton odd jackets recently and it seems like somewhat of an odd duck to me. Your thoughts?
Love the arcane dispute! I see both sides: I think of my gray peak-lapelled DB suit as my dressiest, yet my charcoal gray notch-lapelled SB is the one I would wear to a funeral.
It's discussions like this that make both this blog and its comments invaluable. The plethora of niggling details also appeal to my nerdy side. Without that element of my personality, I wouldn't have reached the level of success I have obtained professionally; let's see if I can also apply it, with help from ASW, to the personal.
I thought that if someone brought up the frock coat it might be you Joe, and I mean that as a compliment.
That doesn't mean I agree with you though, and one of these days I will do a post on why.
Sorry, I used the wrong adjective...
Meant, patch pockets - less detail, more folmal... Should have written lesser as opposed to greater...
Question remains...
Patch pockets are more visible detail, hence less formal.
In line with Brummagem Joe's comment (though he dismisses comparisons with formal evening wear) isn't it worth nothing that - though unfastenable - the dress coat is also double-breasted?
"More buttons are less formal than fewer. "
Correct me if I am wrong, but the above does not apply to the cuffs/sleeves, where fewer buttons is less formal, surely?
Otherwise, this is a useful summary to act as a rule-of-thumb.
"the dress coat is also double-breasted?"
I'm not sure I'd call the evening tail coat double breasted although in the early years of it's development it may have been. It seems to me based on looking at illustrations that until probably around 1840 evening dress was essentially a rather grander (and then gradually a more formal) version of day dress. But then gradually the paths separated and they became totally unrelated. In daywear there were lounge suit spin offs of both frock coats and cutaways that had much shorter tails. The genesis of modern day wear lies here and not in evening wear. But I'm not a historian of dress!
It isn't truly double-breasted as it is of course cut so that it cannot be fastened. However when worn in the Regency era, before being superseded by the frock coat as appropriate morning wear, it was worn buttoned, much like a shadbelly coat.
My understanding is that evening wear of the time was a more 'sombre' version of daytime dress, the coat and pantaloons/breeches in matching black rather than contrasting colours.
I don't know if there is any truth to it but supposedly the open cut came about as it was rather daring at the time.
"My understanding is that evening wear of the time was a more 'sombre' version of daytime dress,"
That's exactly what it was as I mentioned above but by the late 1860's it was competely diverging. I've seen these suits in costume collections in Japan and London and the line of development and separation seems fairly clear to me. And of course there are numerous illustrations.
Will is correct and Joe is mistaken. This notion that the DB lounge coat descends from the frock coat is a phantasm, as DB suits were regarded as semi-casual dress until about the third decade of the 20th century. Hence a peak lapelled SB is more formal than a peaked DB.
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