Too Many Gorgeous Suits!!!
Arghhhh….
But to make a start, Let’s go to LACMA’s website.
Lacma – c.1760s Man’s Blue Suit – Moire effect
These next two suits are interesting – they have shorter waistcoats than my initial understanding of 18th century menswear would guess at!
This first one, I am assuming is a Court Coat. It may not be but the use of gold and silver braids are reducing in popularity and being worn more and more for court only. Please don’t quote me on that – we are woefully behind in our menswear research. We have studied many coats now but not so much the trends in portraiture and paintings, and more importantly within original sources and texts. Here’s to the future that will hopefully contain us growing in our understanding!
Lovely Front View – and, without having seen the original – the look here is that it has been made for a slightly bigger guy.
Close up of back and button detail with spangles and gold wire.
And here’s a link to the actual page in LACMA – https://collections.lacma.org/node/214667
Lacma – c.1765 Plainer Blue Silk Suit
Truly love this one – there is something so elegant about the simple tone of silk and just the buttons for decoration. So much genteel style!
Front View of this c.1765 suit. It’d be interesting to know how many of those buttonholes facing the front are actually functional.
Back View and Back Side View:
Here you see how close the pocket flap is to the top of the side vents and the bottom of the side seam. We’re trying to follow this fashion along as it evolves but are still very much at the start of trying to understand this kind of detail.
Having currently cut a few suits it is interesting to us to understand the fashionable silhouette going for over the shoulders and cross back width.
And here’s the LINK for this lovely one: https://collections.lacma.org/node/213820
