Why did the shirt, jacket and tie become the international standard dress code for business and governments?
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Well my friend, the answer is distinction and intimidation.
A jacket flatters your profile, it widens your shoulders , flattens your chest, and gives you a bigger stature that says “Me Big Boss”
Ties originated from Croatian mercenaries in the 30 years war, it held their jackets shut without requiring a stiff collar, and kings and nobility thought, wow that looks cool. Originally they used complex lace arrangements but they it expanded to other fabric types. Eventually English gentleman brought the style over from Europe, and cravat became a sign if wealth and class. You see, wealth could be denoted by the fabric, and the complexity of the knots required a certain level of skill and time, a commoner wouldn’t be able to learn the etiquette to the level of an aristocrat. As industrialization spread, people wanted simple and straightforward accessories, this is where a necktie with its simpler knot and one that could be smaller or more compact, like a bow tie being a simpler wear than a cravat.
Shirts became a staple due to militarism function leading to fashion. For example a collar ensured a soldierly bearing with the head held upright, it also meant you didn’t need mobility like some common labourer. They served to protect your quality outerwear from the indignities of your body, like perspiration. Since they were usually rather expensive, they could denote class. A gentleman in white could keep his shirt clean because hw wasn’t sweating from toil, and he could afford multiple shirts, where as a labourer may wear the same shirt multiple days. This is why white dress shirts are formal.
It was an adaptation of the morning dress and ascot worn by the wealthy classes in Europe and America since the late 19th century. This in turn was driven by earlier fashion trends originating from European nobility and land owners.
Like today, if you did not dress formally, others would assume you were not wealthy and therefore your business was not prosperous so they would not be willing to conduct business with you themselves.
Over the years fashion has driven change, ties became thinner, fewer people wore hats, newer materials and manufacturing methods have also driven change to styles.
Fashion and business leading cities such as Milan, London and Paris drove the adaptations, and other countries wanted the fashions that were sold in these cities and therefore would follow the designs they created and import or simply manufacturer their own.
It’s worth noting, in some cultures this was not immediately the case. Some countries did not want to trade with western countries that had established this as the style for business. Others were slow to take up the fashion trends, particularly East and Southern Asian countries. It was only in 1912 that Chinese official adopted “Western” formal attire, however many still wore their changshan maguas for decades after. To this day, some countries in the Middle East for example, it is often not the case to see business leaders wear suits but many still wear a thawb.
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.
It’s Anglo/European standard, colonization, imperialism and intentional assimilation efforts made it “international standard” and in many places it isn’t standard unless you’re meeting with a certain audience.
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No mention of Beau Brummell? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Brummell
In the Regency men’s fashion was colourful and fun. Then this guy came along and made it practically a uniform, and it stuck. And because the Brits did it, the Americans did it, and so it spread.
The modern suit is in the British style. Britain was the first country to mass produce cheap clothing, including suits, ties and shirts. Britain dominated global trade and every country dealt with British traders in suits. The British Empire started globalisation and global standards in a variety of areas e.g. law and regulations. Internationally the suit became the standard smart dress-wear for business in the same way English became the language of business.
So most people have talked about the origins of specific clothing but mostly missed the reason it is standard and little changing over many decades:
**Photography**
The earliest versions of “modern” suit attire became fashionable right around the same time photography was starting to become predominant.
This created a ‘common reality’ where most people could see what others looked like throughout the country and the world. The result is increasing levels of standardization and male fashion would become increasingly static especially in more formal context where less radical clothing (i.e. traditional clothing) will seem more appropriate. In fact length and bagginess are really the main changes to the western suit in over a 150 years now. By contrast there was more change in the 50 years before photography came about.
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