Why did the shirt, jacket and tie become the international standard dress code for business and governments?
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Okay, so several elements of a business suit come from various different time periods, so I’ll do my best to explain.
Neckties come from the regency period. In the early 19th century, the middle class in Britain was born into life, and as a result, dirty peasants from the lower classes suddenly had disposable income enough to start imitating the upper classes and aristocracy. This wouldn’t do, so it became a particular focus to dress in the most lavish and outlandishly expensive garments possible, so you could distinguish yourself as a true person of wealth.
Of course, over time if you spend enough time and money on clothes, you can get the endeavour turned into a sort of meta fashion culture within the upper-classes, and eventually you had people who actually took what they looked like seriously. This was the birth of the Dandy’s. Men who spent their time looking as good as humanly possible. This Dandy style eventually of course, went too far and so the “[Fop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fop#/media/File:Colley_Cibber_as_Lord_Foppington_in_The_Relapse_by_John_Vanbrugh1.jpg)” style was invented. This was basically do everything the Dandy’s were doing to the Nth degree. The logic was, if Dandy’s are largely agreed to look good, perhaps I too can look good if I had a tie that was 4x the size, and materials 20x more expensive, with more frills, and more, more more! This included elaborate neck ties. This style solidified neckties as a must have accessory in men’s wear.
As for the shirt and jacket, that came a bit later. During the Victorian times you had a “frock coat”. It was a garment meant to double as a coat, and also be easy to say, ride a bike with one on. It was actually meant to be a more informal garment, but eventually became so popular that more and more items of clothing were invented to go with the frock coat, and eventually it became a standard to wear it. Of course, the French, English, Italians, and Americans etc all had slight variations on what their coats would look like.
Particularly in America, the frock coat evolved into a “white tie” garment. Wherein the raincoat nature of the frock coat was cast off, and instead the coat adopted a tail. This evolved into a “lounge suit” garment, or “black tie”. Or you’ll probably know it more as a Tuxedo (as it was called in America).
Eventually the lounge suit outgrew the frock coat in popularity, which saw lots more fashion experimentation. You get things like the “Sack suit” which is what you’d expect to see men wearing in WWI period dramas or old photographs. When you see a picture where “everyone is wearing a suit”, you’re probably seeing the sack suit.
The suit as we know it now, largely became popular during the war. The waistcoat, under jacket, and coat combo, or the “three-piece” suit is largely outdated by modern standards, but we’d still recognise it as a “suit”. Of course, over time the three piece has fallen out of fashion and business wear is a lot more casual now, but largely suits cycle in and out of fashion with the decades. With “fast fashion” being a thing, suit styles cycle in and out of fashion every decade or so now.
So why go through all this trouble? Well, the fashion trends of Europeans translated to the rest of the world because when these trends were under way, Europeans were top dog on the world stage. They ruled the world, so whatever example they set, other people followed. Foreigners would find that doing business with rich European business-men was difficult in traditional clothing, so they too adopted the fashions of Europe and America in order to “fit in” with the new world order and do business with less friction. Sort of similar to how English is the “language of business”. It’s not officially mandated that this be the case anywhere, it’s just naturally occurred because when globalism was starting, English was the language that won out. If you spoke English, you were more likely to get ahead.
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