Menswear fashion in magazines 1825- 1925

Menswear has been in fashion magazines for over 300 years. In 1825 Costume Parisien illustrates a man’s cutaway tailcoat . It had a squared-off high waistline, related to women’s styles. Men’s sleeves, like those for ladies, were cut full and puffy at the shoulders, and shoulders sloped downward from the neck. The delicacy of the man’s pinstriped trousers, bright buttons, lavishly curled hair, shoes with little bows, and snowy high cravat matched the overall effect of the female toilette.

 Example of tailcoat taken from Costume Parisien 1825

By the 1840's menswear fashion became serious and dull. Dandyism never widely popular, was a doomed phenomenon. There was a dramatic change in men's fashion, as men in France and England put on the black suit as their uniform. Fashion historians have come to call this change "the great masculine renunciation." Black, which began as the colour for ecclesiastical garments, extended to clerks and financial men, and then spread throughout male society to become the favoured colour for all urban gentlemen, respectable professionals, shop clerks, and even artists and writers. Men wore dark shades day and night. According to Les Modes Francaises  1886. Tailors offered fabrics in black or dark tweeds for suits and overcoats and the lines of the clothing were simple and stark. Pants could be checked or striped but fabric tones were subdued. Hats with unadorned lines completed a picture of business-like sobriety and no-nonsense severity.

Les Modes Françaises—Journal des Tailleurs 1886

In 1896 Evening dress was both the same for evening and formal wear. Evening dress is the proper attire, winter or summer, on all occasions after candlelight. There are two kinds of evening dress, formal or “full” as it is sometimes vulgarly called and informal (the complete bachelor 1896).

At this period of time the dinner coat came very much to the fore front. Manners for men 1896 tells a similar story from an American perspective. The describe the dinner coat as the badge of informality . Formerly it was worn only at the club and small stag dinners on occasions when ladies were not present. Now it is in vogue during the summer at hotels, restaurant dinners and in fact any occasion not formal (Manners for men 1916).

The English conduct manual of manners to men views wearing the dinner coat on different occasion but formal and play but not when accompanying women. The dinner jacket has very largely superseded the dress- coat for home wear and at dinners where one is a familiar guest. It is occasionally seen at the  , too but it would be incorrect to wear when accompanying ladies. Etiquette is not now nearly so strict as it used to be (English conduct of manners).

In the early 20th century. There was varying styles and variations of the dinner jacket and suit. Modern etiquette 1914 stated that it was obvious when a man dressed in a suit everyday as he looked natural and not stiff where as a man who takes to it later in life succeeds in looking like a waiter (Modern etiquette 1914).

By 1925 the jacket has become more usual particularly with most young men who wore the dinner jacket habitually whereas before it was on more special occasions (Vogue's book of etiquette 1925).