The Suit: Form, Function and Style
by: Christopher Breward

Hardcover. London, Reaktion Books, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 240 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. The story of this most familiar garment, from its emergence in western Europe at the end of the seventeenth century to today. Suit-wearing figures such as the Savile Row gentleman and the Wall Street businessman have long embodied ideas of tradition, masculinity, power and respectability, but the suit has also been used to disrupt concepts of gender and conformity. Adopted and subverted by women, artists, musicians and social revolutionaries through the decades - from dandies and Sapeurs to the Zoot Suit and Le Smoking. Clean, bright copy.