With over seven billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed. Welcome to Dressed, the History of Fashion podcast, where we explore the who, what, wind of why we wear. We are fashion historians and your host Cassidy Zachary and April Callaghan, and you are officially listening to the very first Dressed episode of nineteen Happy New Year, Happy New Year. Yeah, so, cass as you know, last night was New Year's Eve, and I would ask you what you did last night, but we are recording this in advance, so this is true. And I don't have a crystal ball in terms of what I make it into on New Year's Eve this year, but I would have ventured a guest that I'm probably like many of our listeners, currently vegging out in sweatpants, recovering from last night's festivities. Yeah, it is the season to drink too much champagne. After all, that is one of your and my favorite things to do together. We've definitely killed some bottles together. Um, and more so than any other holiday. Perhaps a bunch of you probably did your partying and formal attire so floor sweeping gowns, short sequence dresses, and of course the tuxedo. That's right, And what better way to ring in the new year than with the history of the tuxedo. Yeah, and men'swear is not my specialty. I feel like I know a decent amount, but I am far from wielding the depth of knowledge of our guests today. Chloe shape In she has like ninety seven degrees in fashion studies. She has an m f A and Costume Design from Yale, a Master's in Fashion and texta Studies from f I T. And she's actually currently finishing her PhD and American Studies at Harvard, where she is focusing on the history of American men's wear. It sounds like a lot of reading. Well, that's kind of funny that you say that, because on more than one occasion I've sent her a text message being like, Hey, what's up, how's it going, and she just responds with a photo of like fifty books that she has to read. Well, in that case, thank you for taking a break, Chloe from all of that reading and joining us today on Dressed. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today on dress Chloe. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, So this is probably going to be a little bit of a school of the obvious statement. But I do think it's important to say that the tuxedo is, of course a very specific type of soup, and we're gonna get into some intriguing nuances about what that means and a little bit. But before we do, I'd like to have a general discussion of the history of men's suits, because you know, while suits are a fixture of the male wardrobe today, this was not always necessarily the case up until the Renaissance. In terms of talking about Western European men's dress, you know, it consisted of hose and various types of robes or tunics, not necessarily suits. So first of all, how do you like to define a suit? And what can you tell us about the early history of the suit? That's a great question. So as far as I'm concerned, there are basically two different ways to define the suit in terms of fashion history, and the early version is the one introduced by Charles the second in England after the restoration, The British diarist Samuel Peeps writes about it in his diary in sixteen sixty six October the eighth. He says, the King hath yesterday and Council declared his resolution of setting a fashion for clothes which he will never alter. It is to be a vest, I know not well how, but it is to teach the nobility thrift, and we'll do good. And so this thing that he called a vest is actually what we would call a coat, which was a little bit less structured than the previous fashions for doublets, and it fell all the way down to the knee. And he didn't invent that garment. The ancient Persians had had a similar garment since like the Bronze Age, but he probably encountered it when he was an exile on the continent. So he introduced it to Britain, and because he was the king, he did it, you know, through a proclamation, and then due to England's political and economic dominance, the fashion caught on in other countries in Western Europe and eventually their colonies around the world. So initially this long coat was worn over these really wide petticoat breaches that had been really popular, which are fabulous. If you ever look at seventeenth century paintings, they're so weird. Samuel Peeps also writes about that he has a friend who comes over one day and he's so embarrassed because he said he's been walking around all day with both of his legs through one side of his He couldn't tell. I love those historical fashion faux pause. But so those breeches kind of fell out of fashion after the arrival of the coat, probably because it fell to the knee so you couldn't really see them. It wasn't worth the money to be spent on them. So so then they're also is they're sort of two layers. There's the vest on the coat, and initially they were basically the same garment before the vest lost its sleeves and got shorter. So but it was those three garments that kind of evolved together through the next century, which was eventually called the suit. And sometimes it was fashionable for all three of those garments to have matching fabrics, and sometimes it was fashionable for them to have different fabrics. But essentially that's sort of the precursor the early history of the suit. Yeah, so we're looking at like like a combo of a coat, a vest or a waistcoat, and pants or breeches essentially, so the other ways that you could define that suit um which you might call the modern suit would be after the turn of the nineteenth century. So it just sort of depends on how you want to define the suit. The concept is more or less the same, but there are notable enough differences that you could really conceive of them as kind of different concepts. One of my all time favorite fashion history quotes is from a really seminal scholar in our field and Hollander who passed away recently. Um. But she was actually an art historian who who frequently worked through the lens of fashion and dress, and she wrote a wonderful book that I highly recommend. I'm sure it is on your shelf at home. UM, Sex and Suits. And she says in the book that, quote, men's suits are neither postmodern nor minimalist, multicultural nor confessional. They are relentlessly modern in the best classic sense. And really what she's getting at here is that the male suit is one of the most enduring styles in the history of fashion or dress. UM. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the silhouette itself resisted change which you just touched upon. UM, Can you tell us a little bit more about the stylistic changes that occurred in mensuits as we move from the seventeenth century into the eighteenth century, because you were talking about the petticoat reaches. But this changes, right, So there's this real shift that happens in aesthetics about a hundred years later, around the time of the American and then the French revolutions. Um. So by this point the coat has lost its full skirt um, though it retained sort of vestiges of it in the back um as the front got cut away um within what today we would call a tailcoat. And the front was generally cut straight across at the waist around this period, as was the vest underneath after military fashions, and it now had a lappel, which it didn't originally have a caller. But the first really major shift that happens is in the fab rex, which change really quite dramatically and irreversibly. So before this period, all of these garments, at least for the most fashionable win and therefore the most rich, they would have been cut quite simply, but they were made out of very luxurious material. So these like lush velvets and embroidered silks, I mean, the fabrics that you see on extant garments are just astonishing. They're socated like you would never see anything like that in a fabric store today. Then at this point shift to dark woolen fabrics, which were really you know, inspired from military uniforms. And the thing that's interesting about the ship to wool is that will functions quite differently than silk does. You can stretch it um when he did, for instance, and this is what starts happening in the construction of coats. You get higher collars and wider lapels, and more shaping through the torso and over the arms, eyes, and those things just weren't possible with silk. The first British tailors in saval Row were former military tailors from the Napoleonic Wars, and so they were used to the ways that woolens could be manipulated and fit had much more close to the body than previously had been the case for all of these like you know, embroidered satins, and that all happens really like quite gradually during the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. But for me, the thing that really kicks this new aesthetic into the more modern version of the suit is the introduction of trousers, which happened in the eighteen twenties because before this, so men had been wearing breeches that like buckled under the knee, along with hose and buckled shoes or um towards the end of the century, these tight pantaloons that are sort of like leggings or skinny jeans. I'm thinking of boball right now, Yes, exactly. So, breaches were worn for court dress until like well into the nineteenth century, but for all other forms of dress aside from riding horses, Trousers took over fairly rapidly once they got popular in the eighteen twenties, and breaches totally went out of style. And so those early suits they still kind of look pretty old fashioned to our eyes because they have kind of an hourglass silhouette and these puffed sleeve caps. But to me they sort of still really count as the modern suit once trousers are involved. And I think that, you know, like you said, fashion studies. Oh, is this huge debt to Ann Hollander. She really laid the foundation for a lot of the things we're still wrestling with today, and really no writer seems to have replaced her as a kind of accessible all encompassing tone for the role that fashion plays, especially from an American perspective, because so many writers about fashion are British, right, right, But I feel like we should push back against is the way she defines the suit as modern, because she's not the only scholar that does. A lot of people make that connection, but I feel like it has a bit of a paternalistic quality in relation to the suit. And you see that show up a lot with discussions of the suit like coming up in other parts of the world to replace traditional or non Western dress, which I think is a product that many people would argue more of colonial is him in power rather than some sort of like universal enlightenment of aesthetic modernity as discovered and displayed through ben wearing suits, which is kind of just a random assortment of garments, right right, right, And and you know, it all goes back to one of our earliest episodes that we did was on Elizabeth Hawes, who was a champion of men wearing skirts or non bifurcated garments. It just makes sense, right if you travel in Asia or if you travel in Morocco, like men are comfortable, right, So yes, I want to touch on um you were talking about as we transition at the tail end of the eighteenth century, tell us a little bit about anglemania, because we're talking about a little bit about colonialism. What is this and what impact did it have on men's fashion? So I think a useful thing to start with is like what is fashion? Because I think fashion studies ends to think of fashion as this sort of universal aesthetic idea that is quite problematic because of how it positions itself around relationships to power. So because it always depends on who is wearing it, and of course what you're talking about are not just the richest people of whatever community you're in, but then also the richest of those rich people in the most powerful and rich countries. So when we talk about Anglomania, like that term obviously wasn't used in England because they were already English, and so that term is a French term. It's like because because so much a fashion is talked about from the French perspective, because we think of France as being this fashion capital. So certainly the French were inspired by the British around the time of the French Revolution, and that's just because of the difference in the way that the aristocracy dress, where as in France it was all based around this palace culture that you know, the courts of Louis. The fix was very different than the landed gentry in England, and so because they all lived on their estates and then only came into town for the season, there was sort of a more rustic quality to their dress, where you know, the French would see them as backwoods, which is the same way that they both thought of America at the time, of course, and so it's you could call it a casual influence, um, although that's sort of a misnomer because it's not like it was less expensive, it just was more suited to things like writing then palace life. So it would include things like leather buckskin breeches and tall writing boots and um, things like that. You're seeing like almost like an influence of like hunting and sports swear, although it wouldn't have been sort of considered that at the time because those were categories of dress that really came out in the nineteenth century with the proliferation of sort of pre math manufacturing. But the idea that there were different types of dress that one could have in one's wardrobe. Yeah, and you lead us into a really pertinent point, which is the topic of formal versus informal dress. You know, our modern day notion is that I'm going to speak very generally here that daytime styles are supposed to be more casual than those weren't in the evening. But in the past this was not always necessarily the case. And I realized that we have never spoken about this undressed before. But will you talk a little bit about the varying levels of formality and they're perceived appropriateness for certain times of day. Yeah, that's another really interesting thing that's happening in this shift between these revolutionary periods into the nineteenth century, because before formality really had to do with location or occasion, you know, with the highest being court dress, and even within court dress, there would be different levels of formality depending on what type of occasion it was. And so there's this shift that happens with the around the rise of democracy where levels of formality have to do more with time of day than where you are or where you're going. So suddenly, and I really haven't found like good sources to show or anyone really discussing how that transition comes about. It's a place that would be really interesting to hear more people talking about this transition. So so people start dressing more for a time of day than for where they're going. You know, they wear morning dress in the morning and afternoon dress in the afternoon, and the garments are then named after time of day and a dinner practices are also changing around this time too, So it's not just fashion, it's changing, it's the whole social intercourse. Um. Where dinner, you know, had once spen the mean meal of the day that would take place in the daytime, suddenly it happens in the evening. And of course this is another sign of conspicuous consumption because it's more expensive to light your home in the evening because it's dark outside. And so all all of formality is really a performance of class because it's all about having extra you know, you have the nice set of china, you have the nice dishes, you have the fancier parlor, you have your dinner dress which is different than your daytime dress, and you even have a different set of manners for formal occasions. So um. But all of those things are about extra which means of course having the luxury and the knowledge of how to perform that right and also etiquette. You know, we see this proliferation at the beginning of the nineteenth century and increasingly as we moved into the nineteenth century, of all these etiquette books. These things were so completely intricate, like how you would greet if you're going to visit If you're a man and you're going to go visit a woman that you were friends with, how well you know that woman could dictate if you took off your gloves when you went inside, and where you placed your hat, and if you messed that up. It was considered a social full path. Oh yeah. And the etiquette guides are so interesting because some of them will give you really specific details about, you know, when to touch your hat in public, you know, when you run into someone you know, or how soon you must respond to a dinner invitation. But a lot of them are much more vague. They are more about encouraging people to do right and have good manners without actually really telling you what that means. Right. It's all insider's club, you know, and it would really marketed for the growing middle class, because the aristocracy doesn't need to have better manners. It's about people who want to in it as participating in a higher strata of society. Those are the people who need those reference guards, sort of like fashion magazines today. You know, people who are fashionable don't read fashion magazines. It's for people who want to emulate that. And again that's another marker of class, right. So speaking of like marker of class and you know, social pressure, I'd like to touch on something that has always fascinated me about men'swear, especially during this period of the nineteenth century, and that is that there's this very real social pressure for men to conform to this very narrow and prescriptive dress code. You know, in any kind of like aberration from the established canon of the silhouette or the color palette. You know, any aberration from that held connotations of transgression, whether that be social or sexual. You know, can you speak to this and also what is the legacy of this in men's wear today. Yeah, I love talking about gender in this period, and I think to to bring in another early fashion scholar, I want to talk about John Carl Flugel, who is so he wrote this book in ninety called The Psychology of Clothes, and again it really is still sort of foundational in the field of fashion studies. And so he calls this this great shift that happens from the eighteenth to nineteenth century. He calls it the great masculine renunciation, and he says of this period that man abandoned his claim to be considered beautiful. He henceforth aimed at being only useful. And so that really, I think, sort of encapsulates this different in a through a gendered lens, where once the old division was about class, where anyone of the aristocracy, male or female, would wear clear signs of wealth through expensive fabrics and high heels and lacy cuffs and powdered wigs and all things that are totally impractical and are very costly to buy in to maintain. And I just I just want to under jack hair that would be both men and women, like wearing the lace, wearing the wigs, wearing the makeup, wearing the high heels, wearing the all the colors. It's gender didn't necessarily dictate one versus the other, right, I mean, gender dictated other things, like pants versus skirts, or courses versus no courses. But the fabrics and a lot of the accoutrement were the same. So this shift that happens is quite radical, not necessarily because it's a shift, because fashion is sort of always about change. That's what fashion does. The thing that is unusual about the suit is that it stops changing. So if we got to the place where trousers were incorporated and men have these like huffed sleeve our glass, you know, frock coats um and that lasted for maybe twenty or thirty years, and then all of a sudden they did something else, like started wearing high heels or pantaloons again, or the petticoat breaches came back, or we went back to doublets or something like that. Right like that, that could have been another thing that happened. We think about the suit as sort of so standard, it's like essential to being masculine, but it really was sort of a fashion accident, as all fashion kind of is. And it's interesting the way that it's talked about. A lot of writers will say that it's due to the rise of democracy that that people wanted a visual marker for this new idea of equality, But of course equality was really equality for men and mostly for white men, particularly if you're talking about America and landowners. So he wasn't you know, we took the idea of democracy in this period as thought of as as like true equality, and it really wasn't. It was just equality for a certain category of people. But those are the category of people that could afford to introduce and maintain a new style of dress. And so it really benefited them, those people who were probably not nobility and wanted access to social or political power. So it was very useful for them to have a visual marker of their sameness with people who were descended from the aristocracy or you know, had more wealth or prestige socially somehow. And so it's really interesting when you talk about, you know, how that comes into today's fashion because you can still look at men'swear through that same lens. I call it urban camouflage. Like it's not always about the suit. I mean, if you go to Wall Street, like you definitely see suits. But I grew up in California, and no one wears suits in California, at least not where I you know, saw people. So there it might be you know, board shorts and Hawaiian shirts or you know, it depends on where you are, yea, what industry you're in. You know, even when you talk about the a similar income bracket. If you look at Wall Street bankers, they dress really differently than like tech bros. In Silicon Valley. There's a different aesthetic culture. So you know, you might be wearing like a Zupperman hoodie and jeans and plain T shirts, but that still is kind of an established uniform that that that often men are more likely to conform to. There's this sort of idea that in women's dress, the worst thing that could possibly happen is that you show up to, especially in formal ware, that you show up to something of evening occasion dressed exactly like someone else, Whereas for men, that's like the ideal thing to happen. It's like opposite sides of the coin. If you go to prom and you buy your dress at a mall, there are like national databases now where if you buy a prom dress, you have to enter what high school you go to, and then that store will not sell that same dress to anyone else who's going to go to your high school. So it's like regulated through not just like social etiquette, but there are actually now systems in place exactly. Wow. So now that we have examined the early history of the suit. I'd like to take a brief sponsor break, and when we come back, let's talk about the texedo. Welcome back. This may sound like a very straightforward question, but kloit what is a tuxedo? Because I think some people might be surprised to learn is a little bit more of a complex inquiry than it initially seems. Yeah, so a tuxedo is what you would call um black tie or semi formal evening wear, and this consists of a black dinner jacket and trousers worn with a white shirt, a black bow tie, and traditionally a black commer bund, although those seem to have gone out of style. The more formal white tie is a tailcoat instead of the shorter tuxedo jacket, which is worn with a white bow tie and a white waistcoat. And people have started calling us a tuxedo as well, which I suppose I should get over, but really they're too We're sticklers for the accuracy, yes, fashion historians, So the thing that makes uh tuxedo different from a daytime suit are really just a couple of things. Um, the trousers that you would wear with a formal suit often have a satin stripe down the out seam, which they don't have to have. But again that's kind of a marker that you can afford two pairs of black trousers, one that would definitely not be worn in the daytime and one that would only be worn in the evening. And then the difference in the jacket is in the lapel, which has a shiny either satin or silk file lapel instead of the wool body coat. And if it's a shell collar, the whole thing will be that contrasting fabric, But if it's a notch lapel or a peak lapel, the collar will be the same as the wool and it's just the lapel that will have the contrasting fabric along with the buttons and sometimes like the welt pocket. So basically it's a marker of time of day and also class that you have all of this extra income in order to be able to afford very specific niche types of garments. Right, the formal wear had been in place for quite a long time by the time the tuxedo came into fashion, and some of the earliest mentions that I have found for it are actually in tailoring advertisements. Um and it's not a surprise that tailor's would be so thrilled because you can imagine if formal wear changes so little um or so slowly, that men would be like, I'm good, I've got my dinner suit, and the tailor's would be like, sure, you don't want another one. It was like a really easy way that like suddenly every client that they had would come in and get an additional suit made for their semi formal occasions. And and and now we think of the texedo as being formal formal wear, but in the past it was like this interstitial kind of semi formal style of dressing that I had no idea that the term tuxedo actually has origin in the United States and in New York States specifically. Can you tell us how the style of dress came to be called the tuxedo? Yeah, So there's again sort of two different histories here, one of which is the style of garment that we now call the tuxedo, and the other is that word itself. So the style, the history of the style starts around eight in England, when the Prince of Wales, the future Edward the seventh um commissioned his tailor Henry Pool to make him a taliss dinner jacket UM that he could wear to dinner. Um. So it would be formal, but it would be more comfortable. That was what he wanted. So because good properly cut tail coats were quite rigid and men complained that they were uncomfortable, so they had these tightly fitted fiddle back constructions with lots of padding through them. And this shorter tailless garment was modeled after the more casual smoking jackets that were popular in the nineteenth century. Um. They were sort of cut more like modern blazers. They were roomier, they had whiter arms, eyes, they had last padding. And the Prince of Wales was sort of a bit of a maverick and a rule breaker in terms of style. UM, so he would never have worn this jacket in the presence of his mother, Queen Victoria. You know, things were just not done. Downton Abbey, the TV show, has a couple of good scenes where the dowager Countess Um is so disgusted with her son for wearing this casual dinner jacket and she's she's concerned if it's dinner, you're dressed dinner, and that means you're wearing a tailcoat. So that's the origin of the style, and it was probably brought to America via this millionaire named James Brown Potter, who his wife was apparently quite a looker. She became an actress. And the Prince of Wales was very interested in pretty ladies, and he invited that he was to spend the weekend at Sandringham, his estate, and at the time, the servants would basically arrange all of the details. So you know, my valet would call your vallot and say, what are we wearing to dinner? Sort of like how if we were going to go to a party, Like if you invited me to a party with your friends, I might call you ahead of time and be like, what are we wearing to this party? Like is it jeans and t shirts? Or are we getting dolled up? So it's sort of like the male nineteenth century version of that. And so the Prince of Wales, Butler Vallot, had Potter's sent to Pools his tailor to have him made the same jacket so that he would be wearing the same thing as the Prince of Wales, because you know, he wouldn't want to be uncouth and wear something different. Which was obviously done quite a bit ahead of time. There's a lot more planning that went into these things today, and so probably a lot of these stories are apocryphal, but probably he then brought this dial back to America and he was one of the founders of this we should we won't think of it like a gated community today outside of Manhattan called Tuxedo Park with Pierre Lorillard, who was another wealthy American financier, and the words Tuxedo was that was the name for the lake there. It's a probably Native American word, possibly an Algonquin word like tuxito or tuxedo depending on how you pronounce it, which either means clear running water or crooked river or something like that. So there was this Algonquin name for the lake, the Tuxedo Lake, that they built this community around, and then they had an annual ball at the Tuxedo Park Club and so either Potter started wearing it there and it became notable through his connection. Um. There's also a story that says that the son of Pierre Lorillard, Griswald Grizzy Um, were it at the autumnal ball in eighty six. But however it happened somewhere around six this garment was associated with this particular place, the Tuxedo Park Club. UM, and it was because of that that this dinner jacket started to become a tuxedo jacket. But that term still really is a very American term. You know, we think of it as being completely standard, but it's like using inches or like eight and a half by eleven paper. We think that everyone we're like the only country on earth that does those things, but it says weird, even though we are the outlier. So the tuxedo is the same way. In Britain they call it the dinner jacket, and in most other countries they call it less smoking or some derivative of that, because of its early association with smoking jackets. UM. Not that it was ever a smoking jacket, but the style was based on that construction, UM, So that's how it got its association. So that's what it's called in most other countries. So I'm really glad you brought this up, the termless smoking, because clearly we right now have been speaking about men'swear. But I'd like to make the very real point that the texedo is not exclusively warren by men. Women also to have a historically adopted the style. Um and and who are some of the early female adopters of the texedo. What I find interesting is that the word tuxedo UM was initially used to advertise resort where rather than evening dress. Also because of this association with the Tuxedo Park Club UM So in nineteen twenties advertisements, you can find tuxedo tennis dresses or tuxedo sweaters and they have no visual relationship to evening dress. That's just how what that word connotated to people at the time. The first reference that I remember seeing to the word tuxedo being used as like an intentional appropriation of male evening dress was by Men Bouchet in the nineteen fifties still dresses, UM. You know it was. It was like a cocktail dress basically, but in contrasting fabrics to make it reference male tuxedos, so in terms of tuxedos with pants. The first real UM like widespread adoption of it was through Sat Laurent's collection Loss Smoking Collections UM And he's a you know, per Asian fashion designer in in in eighteen sixty six and his UM Autumn Winter collection he showed this collection with I think it was two at the time. In this first collection women's pants suits that were based clearly based on male tuxedos, and they're very silly. They you know, have these like very nineteen sixties kind of baby doll hairstyles and has a blow tie roughly shirt fronts. But that collection has run every year. I mean he designed it until he retired and I think two thousand and two, and all of the other designers under Laurent have continued this tradition. So that's kind of the ideal marker for the tuxedo and women's where, although it's also sort of um misnamed too. There's this very famous fashion photograph of lists smoking collection UM taken by Helmett Newton for French Vogue in nineteen seventy five, and everyone calls it a tuxedo. It is demonstrably nothing like a tuxedo. It's a pin stripe suit, no tuxedo or pin stripes, doesn't have a shiny lapel, it's like a I think it's a peaked lapel actually, and there's no black bow tie, there's no comer. But it's like she's wearing a silk a white silk blouse. And uh, what looks like a navy pin striped men's suit, But it just has whether or not it was in If it was in the Less Smoking collection, then of course it was called less Smoking, regardless of where that influence came from. So we have this sort of laziness around what what fashion journalists, if maybe not fashion scholars, use the word tuxedo to refer to And that's definitely one of the trespassers, right, well, I mean it basically, it's like, oh, there's a woman in a suit, Yeah, it must be a tuxedo. There's an image of Collette wearing a suit that is often referred to as a tuxed. And again it's clearly a black daytime suit, Like there's not a contrasting lapel. She's wearing it with like regular shirt and a regular necktie. So there's there's nothing about it that is a tuxedo. Yeah. And you know, in terms of like things that have been going on in the past few years, so much press attention was given to Hillary Clinton's pants suits during the last election. You know, if you ask me, an undo amount of attention because I really began to find it irritating that people were really paying so much attention to her wardrobe rather than what her message was on the issues. But in your opinion, like, why is it that we're still having these discussions about women wearing suits women in pants? Like why? And how does the suit connotate power and both the male and the female wardrobe. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean you're talking about the impact of visual culture and the kind of symbolism that action can portray. So if the suit has been worn for you know, over a hundred years, almost two hundred years by men, and if men are or have been traditionally in positions of social, economic, political power, um, it makes sense that then therefore this garment, this ensemble also becomes kind of a marker of that power. I mean, the words suits is often used interchangeably to mean men, right, so those two think like a suit is basically a visual marker of masculinity but also of power depending on how you look at it, Western power, political power, etcetera, etcetera. So you know, I think it's interesting that we're talking about eighteen eighties six in this origin of the tuxedo, because a hundred years later, in nineteen eighties six, um, this historian and John Walack. Scott published an article in the American Historical Review called Gender as a Useful Category of Historical Analysis, in which she argued that gender is a primary way of signifying relationships to power, and I think that that is something that fashion scholars could really benefit from paying more attention to that when we talk about that. You know, there's so many people talk about fashion and gender, but we don't often talk about the power and balance that lies underneath those issues. And that certainly was the case with Hillary Clinton and the pants suits. And it's not just her, it's you know, every woman in power. And you know, part of it is because we're so used to seeing women where different things were, so you know that there's there also is the you know, what are you wearing? Campaign? Uh? You know, ask what does it? Ask better questions to women on red carpet, where men get asked these like deep, you know, philosophical questions about their roles and their careers, and women are just asked like who are you wearing? Signer for the dress you're wearing? Yeah. Um. There's another good example of that, I think is the Golden Globes earlier this year in January, where women many women chose to wear black garments as um solidarity or protest because of the Me Too movement. UM. And I certainly thought that was interesting. It definitely made a visual statement. But you know, personally, I think it would have been more revolutionary for them to not wear heels, because heels is kind of the same kind of symbolic marker of femininity in the same suits as for men. You know, it's not like I have anything against heels. Um, it's just the ubiquity of them and the way that they are women's bodies are policed around them. At the Con Film Festival, I think they still won't let you walk down the red carpet if you're not wearing heels. Wow. I had no idea that there were like a quote unquote like dress code. Oh yeah. And there are some directors, even like male directors, whose wives weren't wearing heels because of age or discomfort or like people I don't want to wear heels. Um, sorry if I'm not supposed to stay on your podcast. Uh. And they still won't let someone nominated walk down the red carpet if they are in the company of a woman who was not wearing heels. What. Yeah, there was someone that had like a broken ankle and they were like, you can't walk down the red carpet because you're not wearing heels. That's crazy. Yeah, And we come back, we come back to this again again and again again on this show, talking about like how women's bodies are police visa VI fashion and and you know, it dates, it's it's a centuries old tale and it hasn't changed obviously. So one last thing I'd like to talk about is that throughout the history of fashion, we kind of see this ongoing impulse towards informality. You know, you mentioned earlier that the texedo originally was a semi formal garment. Now we think of it as a formal garment. And it's oftentimes that these kind of informal garments or silhouettes were initially worn in the privacy of one's home, and that one or two generations later, these same styles or silhouettes are now like in the public sphere as fashion proper. You know, the popularity of athletisure or street style today is a really good example of this. And you know, high fashion runways are chalk full of street style. So so given this kind of arc of like the informal becoming the formal. What do you think the future of formal wear is as it stands today and specifically in terms of the texedo. Well, first of all, say that I really am more of a historian than a fashion forecaster, so I really look back more than forward. Um, because you know, there's basically two things that can happen, right, is that it can go out of style, um, there will be no more formal wear, or it can have a resurgence. And generally resurgences come with something new. Right, It's unlikely that there'll just be a resurgence for the same old thing that people got tired of before could happen, but I sort of think it's more likely that there will be if formal wear continues, UM, that there will be a maybe greater parameter of what is allowed is not really the right word, but seeing popularize whatever. And I think that um, that can come from a couple of places, one of which is the sort of influence of different ideas of masculinity which are being brought in through the performances of sexuality or just gender as a much more sort of fluid idea. UM. With everything being put pulled into question you know, can you wear a tuxedo with a blouse? Can you wear a tuxedo with heels? Can you wear a tuxedo with shorts? With long hair? Like? All of those are Can you wear a pink texeda exactly? And color? I think is that the other place? And and I think where you see that a lot is particularly in African American men, who seem to be much more historically interested in pushing boundaries around color when it comes to men's suits. I mean, one of the great examples of that is the premiere for Black Panther. The idea of formal wear on that red carpet was just so different, so much more creative than I think any other place I've seen. So I think those would be you know, interesting places to look for inspiration. You know. As as much as this uniformity is very exclusive, it traps people who don't have the money or the gender to participate in that uniform. As much as it is exclusive, a lot of men also think of it as kind of a prison to you know, that that they aren't allowed to or encourage themselves, yeah, through any kind of sartorial deviants, much less like showing their feelings or hugging each other or you know, anything like that, so that that it'll be interesting, certainly to see what the next trends for that is. I mean, the places we see formal wear are aside from like the very rich, the places that we are most likely to see formal wear are celebrities on red carpets who are artists, and those artists are often in partnerships with fashion designers who are also artists, so they're sort of an inherent kind of rule breaking nature to those events. And then musicians at the symphony who are sort of this are they artists or are they servants kind of fence. And then waiters or or butlers or doorman, you know who, who function in a more servant like role. You know, another sort of interesting part of the history of formal where men's formal wear is the servant class often would adopt the formal were of a previous generation. So like, I don't know, the footmen on Cinderella's coach, you know, we're wearing powdered wigs and breeches, even though the what was you know what, the prince was wearing trousers because their servants, um, they're they're a dressed in this livery, but that livery is reflective of a kind of formal idea of an earlier generation tradition exactly. But but if you think about how fashion used to move a bit faster in men's wear, you get to the end of the nineteenth century, and if servants are starting to adopt form aware of a couple of generations prior, but that formal war hasn't actually changed in the upper class, then there's no difference between what the butler is wearing and what the man of the house is wearing, um, which was quite confusing for people. That's another place that you see a lot of early public discourse around formal wear are like, you know, letters to the editor. People would write into the New York Times and say, you know, at this embarrassing faux pas where I gave my empty champagne glass to the man of the house because they're all dressed alike, exactly, Or I, you know, introduced myself to who I thought was running the party and it turned out that he was the butler, you know that, um. And so they were like admonishing people like, can't we have a servant uniform so you can better tell the difference between the upper class and the working class. Wow, you've given us a lot to think about on that term in terms of like how like prescriptive and narrow men's wear can sometimes be, or the social constraints around it. And unfortunately we ever at a time, so we have to leave off today. Thank you so much for joining us on Dressed. Chloe. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I know you just finished your semester, so um, please take a break, take care of yourself, and we're gonna let you get back to all those stacks and stacks of books that are in your house. Chloe, thank you so much for joining us to speak about men's wear, the suit and it's specialized version as the tuxedo A. I think it's really fascinating when you consider the fact that for more than three hundred years, the three piece suit has endured in the male wardrobe. So you know, over the years, pants have really shifted in shape from the petticoat breaches Chloe mentioned, to knee breeches to trousers. The length of the coat and waistcoat or vest has changed over time. But really the elemental pieces of the three A suit have was stood the test of time. Yes, so much so that Ann Hollander in her book Sex and Suits that I mentioned earlier, she actually kind of jokingly referred to the male three pre suit as quote irritating perfection because it's so resistant to change. And this quote, you know, has stuck with me from the moment that I read it more than ten years ago. And with that, we conclude this week's episode. And whether you identify as male, female, or non binary, may you consider the legacy of the three piece suit and your wardrobe next time you get Dressed and cast. This does it not only for us this week, but actually season one of Dressed. This is our last episode of the season and we would like to sincerely thank both our listeners and our guests for all of your support over this past year. It has really been a blast. But don't worry, we will be back very soon. We're going to take a tiny little break before we come back with season two to enjoy some time with our family and friends over the holidays. Yes, and I also plan on unpacking because I just moved last week and I am literally living in a sea of boxes. But don't worry. As Cass said, we will be back on February twelve, nineteen, just in time for Fashion Week in New York, and in the meantime, you have a few weeks to catch up on any of our past episodes that you might have missed. Cass, would you like to give a little tease as to the subject of our first episode of season two, because you did post some photos of yourself working on this episode on our Instagram stories a little while back. I would love to. Season two will begin with the one and only Christian Door, the subject of the exhibition Viewer from Paris to the World, which is on view now until March three at the Denver Art muse In. So check out the exhibition if you can, and be ready to tune in February twelve for our interview with the foremost do your expert and exhibitions curator Bahns Mueller. Yes, I cannot wait for this one, and perhaps we will post some teaser images for a few of our upcoming episodes that we already have planned on our Instagram feed, which is as always at Dressed Underscore Podcast, and we do post images to accompany each week's episode there and this is also our Twitter handle and you can find us on Facebook at Dressed Podcast without the underscore. And also we get a lot of messages asking for book recommendations, so just a reminder, we do publish recommended readings for each episode on our website, Dressed podcast dot com. Hope all of you who bought holiday gifts at our merch store te public dot com Forward slash Dress aren't enjoying them, and we promised to bring some new designs to the store while we are on break, so you can find those at again. T E E public dot com Forward slash Dressed. Many thanks to our producers Holly Fry and k C. P Gram for all of their hard work on season one. We love you guys, catch you soon in bye