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How to dress like a gentleman- A guide on the history of waistcoats worn by the true gentleman
WAISTCOAT
HISTORY
This is the only garment to have been created by royal proclamation, and thus the only garment
whose origin can be precisely dated. The date is Sunday October 7 1666. We know so because that
assiduous civil servant Samuel Pepys entered it in his diary: ‘The King hath yesterday in Council
declared his resolution of setting a fashion for clothes, which he will never alter. It will be a vest, I know
not well how.’
Pepys went to Westminster Hall the following Monday to find out .Charles II modeled the new style in
person. This very first vest (a name still used by tailors, and Americans) was ‘of black cloth and
pinked with white silk under it.’ Sober and comparatively simple, it flew in defiance of the extravagant
dictates of Versailles and was thus part of a calculated strategy to undermine French influence.
The idea was not original, but based upon ‘the Persian mode’, a fad for the exotic brought back by
English visitors to the Court of Shah Abbas. The Persian vest as adopted by the Court of St James
was sleeved and long-longer , even, than the coat worn over it, but gradually it became shorter, to
just above the knee, to mid-thigh, to the top of the thigh, and finally, by 1790, to the waistline ,where it
has remained ever since. It was sleeveless from the 1750s and in all but minor detail (Such as the
provision of a watch-chain hole, circa 1880) had become the waistcoat as we know it.
Despite the frugal intentions of its royal sponsor, in the course of the 18th century the waistcoat
became an excuse for gorgeous display, with up to 20 buttons on parade. Beau Brummell, ever the
purist, advocated pure white in waistcoats, but his was a lone voice .George IV owned around 300,
and tucked his ever-increasing girth into ever more sumptuous creations.
Even in the grip of Victorian sobriety, the fancy waistcoat endured as an outlet for individual creativity,
A gentleman’s wardrobe properly contained upwards of a dozen in a self-indulgent riot of spots,
stripes and floral patterns rendered in all manner of material and audacious colour.
The circumstances of the 20th century were to conspire against the waistcoat. Advances in home
insulation, Central heating and the ‘saloon’ car encouraged a shedding of superfluous clothing, while
the emergence of the highly adaptable sweater, plus wartime austerity and clothes rationing combined
to all but deal a death blow.
All, but…from the 1960s it began a slow recovery in both its incarnations, as raison d’etre of the three-
piece suit and as a casual accessory. One factor has been the comeback of the single-breasted suit
with trousers cut high to receive braces, for the belted, low-slung mode made it all but impossible to
wear a waistcoat without ugly folds of shirt extruding.
HISTORY
This is the only garment to have been created by royal proclamation, and thus the only garment
whose origin can be precisely dated. The date is Sunday October 7 1666. We know so because that
assiduous civil servant Samuel Pepys entered it in his diary: ‘The King hath yesterday in Council
declared his resolution of setting a fashion for clothes, which he will never alter. It will be a vest, I know
not well how.’
Pepys went to Westminster Hall the following Monday to find out .Charles II modeled the new style in
person. This very first vest (a name still used by tailors, and Americans) was ‘of black cloth and
pinked with white silk under it.’ Sober and comparatively simple, it flew in defiance of the extravagant
dictates of Versailles and was thus part of a calculated strategy to undermine French influence.
The idea was not original, but based upon ‘the Persian mode’, a fad for the exotic brought back by
English visitors to the Court of Shah Abbas. The Persian vest as adopted by the Court of St James
was sleeved and long-longer , even, than the coat worn over it, but gradually it became shorter, to
just above the knee, to mid-thigh, to the top of the thigh, and finally, by 1790, to the waistline ,where it
has remained ever since. It was sleeveless from the 1750s and in all but minor detail (Such as the
provision of a watch-chain hole, circa 1880) had become the waistcoat as we know it.
Despite the frugal intentions of its royal sponsor, in the course of the 18th century the waistcoat
became an excuse for gorgeous display, with up to 20 buttons on parade. Beau Brummell, ever the
purist, advocated pure white in waistcoats, but his was a lone voice .George IV owned around 300,
and tucked his ever-increasing girth into ever more sumptuous creations.
Even in the grip of Victorian sobriety, the fancy waistcoat endured as an outlet for individual creativity,
A gentleman’s wardrobe properly contained upwards of a dozen in a self-indulgent riot of spots,
stripes and floral patterns rendered in all manner of material and audacious colour.
The circumstances of the 20th century were to conspire against the waistcoat. Advances in home
insulation, Central heating and the ‘saloon’ car encouraged a shedding of superfluous clothing, while
the emergence of the highly adaptable sweater, plus wartime austerity and clothes rationing combined
to all but deal a death blow.
All, but…from the 1960s it began a slow recovery in both its incarnations, as raison d’etre of the three-
piece suit and as a casual accessory. One factor has been the comeback of the single-breasted suit
with trousers cut high to receive braces, for the belted, low-slung mode made it all but impossible to
wear a waistcoat without ugly folds of shirt extruding.
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