In the early twentieth century most workers wore old bespoke suit, reserving an economy measure their proper costume, when they had one Sunday. They could also involve a jacket and vest pants made from a solid and practical fabric like corduroy. A collarless striped shirt, a vest, a handkerchief tied around the neck, big studded leather boots and a flat cap, or sometimes a bowler hat with a tie: it was the “uniform” of the manual worker in Western societies.
Throughout the century, the custom suit (jacket + pants) became the menswear work par excellence, especially in the higher social classes. Executives, managers, office workers, and a multitude of businesses adopt it as a real uniform. It also contrasts the “white collar” (service workers, policy makers in the company) to blue collar (workers, performers). The suit is the uniform of the professional man, which is rather ironic, because it was supposed to deliver the males from the shackles of the work uniform and military uniform. As an anecdote, when peace returns in 1945, British soldiers demobilized each received a civil suit in the great chain of male clothing Montague Burton.
Therefore, the suit is no longer that of gentlemans or dandies, it becomes essential of menswear, clothes make the man. In the 80’s one of the figures of masculinity is also pressed this man in suit and tie, corporate executive and family man. The suit embodies the values of professional success, prestige and elegance. The dark cheap custom suit and sober as centerpiece of the male wardrobe (while it is expanding and diversifying in the 50s) has a tough life. The purchase of the first suit for a young man also is a real rite of passage to adulthood, he “made man.” However, the formal aspect of the garment is sometimes denigrated by the younger generations, who tend to assign this garment to specific events where elegance is obligatory: marriage, family parties … and of course work! To the question “What is the costume for you? “Number of respondents associate the garment with the bankers, traders, company managers or family gatherings. For them, apart from these occasions and that specific professional position, the suit is not suitable for everyday life, “the suit aptly named, when I wear one I feel be disguised. In setting, banker, in short suit what! “(Thomas, 25, student)
However, today these young men express other representations related to the costume, the idea of class, the embodiment of elegance, but in this case they do not cite the worker as a model but figures film or world of music. The speech of my respondents put me on the track of the changing representations of the male suit. See in the pictures what new forms the suit can take and what representations it creates models.
Man Suits 