Tailoring Masculinity: Imposing Neoclassical & Nationalist Principles to Suit the English Man(hood)

Abstract

This thesis investigates the history of menswear suiting, specifically how the suit came to embody the aesthetics and form of the modern era. It looks at how masculinity rooted in a timeless garment is historically fixed in political principles of English Enlightenment, aesthetics of neoclassicism, and religious reformation promoting egalitarianism amongst social classes. The project looks primarily at the fashion trends of Macaroni’s, dandies, and utilitarian lounge suit culture to inspect the reasoning behind the drastic changes in menswear at this specific time and the corresponding shifts in expectations and expressions in masculinity for English men. Books on tailoring from the nineteenth century were placed in direct conversation with historical analysis of the movements taking place in England during Regency and Victorian Eras. This project also involved travel to London, England to research fashion plates at the V&A Museum, Greco-Roman sculptures at the British Museum, and garment artifacts from Saville Row tailor shops and the V&A. Oral history and artifacts were also collected and analyzed respectively in tailor shops on Saville Row. This project found that menswear suiting acted as a tool to maintain expressions of power for the English nobility during class shifts in the nineteenth century. Fashioning was a method of subjugating different socioeconomic groups as well as regulating and defying against social expressions. Suiting was used to propagate a system of valuing certain bodies over others. Clothing programmed the spaces which individuals could inhabit and restricted how those bodies could physically and symbolically move. From this era, the suit remains more or less fixed in its expression of a masculinity rooted in constraint, physical dominance, and civility. However, in understanding this history, designers, artists, and clothe-wearing bodies of non-white, non-male backgrounds can reconstruct the suit (just as it was during this era) to make the language of suiting suit their bodies and identities.