For one you get used to it. People who spend more time outdoors in the heat tend to sweat less.
Also T-shirts, wife beaters, and boxer shorts were originally invented as underwear, as in to be worn under other clothing. T-shirts didn’t start getting worn as outer wear until the 60’s when people started printing logos and slogans on them. Cotton T-shirts were used for this because they were cheap.
As underwear the cotton absorbs sweat and makes it more comfortable to wear a suit or whatever to wear over top. It also makes it less likely to have sweat stains on your suit jacket
Also suits weren’t worn by the working class when doing manual labor. That would have usually been cotton shirts and denim.
The fabric used was natural – cotton and linen. Thin fabrics that breathe and keep you cool in the heat.
Not the polyester/nylon/spandex crap we have our modern clothes made from.
>“By 1901, men attending spectator sports in the summer were increasingly
wearing **flannel and linen suits**, straw Panama or boater hats, blazers,
white trousers, and, of course, the royal-approved homburgs [a type of
hat] and tweeds.
I’ve seen people mention clothing material, which is a factor, but something I didn’t see was weight. In 2020, the average man in the US weighed 200 pounds, but in 1960 he weighed just 166 pounds and being 35 pounds down goes a long way to minimizing chub rub. I couldn’t find pre-1960 data in the brief research I’ve done, but I did see that the national school lunch program was created because a significant fraction of WWII recruits were underweight. Figure people were even thinner then, and it’s not surprising they’d have less issues with chafing than modern folks do.
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