The Suit

April 15, 2016

Breward (cultural history, Univ. of Edinburgh; The Hidden Consumer) offers a brief but comprehensive outline of the suit's evolution from its aesthetic conception to becoming a powerful icon of modern refinement. Donning the social, economic, and political symbols associated with the sourcing, creating, and promoting of garments, the suit has shed layers of physical reinforcement through the ages. This book details the product's acclimation to the changing world of fashion in which construction is the union of aspiration and trust between tailor and client, mechanization allows for the collapse of hierarchy, and the working class redefines values of appearance and possibilities. Much of the text is dedicated to the suit's adoption by particular political groups, social movements, and forms of labor. Breward touches on the avant-garde idea of deconstructing the components of clothing in search of an article's modern identity and spurs the question of what's next in the suit's journey. A section on contemporary variations of the suit and technological innovations in the fabric industry could have anchored the present-day relevancy of this book. VERDICT This title reaffirms the suit's enduring features, though it may be too padded with cultural history to provide much more than that. Useful for potential menswear designers but not a necessary purchase for industry professionals.--Zeying Wang, School Library Journal (ZW)

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