There are many things to see if you ‘look’ at history. If you look at the clothes that men wore from about 1800 until now there are some interesting trends to see. Many years ago men (at least British upper class men) wore a tailcoat (in the USA it was called a morning coat), this ‘cutaway coat allowed for better clearance while riding a horse. By the 1850’s it had turned into the Swallowtail coat, and was used for formal evening wear. Even now the morning coat is the most formal wear that men in the western world affect.
In the 1850’s Prince Albert popularized the frock coat, which was a casual design or gentlemen, by the 1900’s this was considered to be the most formal sort of day wear for men (think: Ambassadors…). He was also responsible for the use of the tweed hunting jacket, which he wore when grouse hunting in Scotland. This is the great grandfather of our formal dress suit.
You can start to see an interesting trend…
Most people know something of Levi Strauss and the beginnings of blue jeans from the San Francisco gold rush (1840’s). Even in my lifetime, the lowly dungaree was considered to outré to even be considered as appropriate in any use outside of ditch digging. Now, all of these things have changed. Do you know anyone who wears formal shirts with celluloid collars? I don’t even know if they still make them, let alone the collars.
In this present port-modern world where a sport coat and jeans is considered as reasonably formal wear for men (well, for at least 9-% of them…), people from even 50 years ago would be amazed, just by the clothing we wear.
What I just wrote is quite obvious when you think of it, but it is almost always presented with an eye towards women’s fashions (which are generally much more volatile than men’s). Through looking at men’s clothing, one can see what appears to be a trend where the most casual of clothing slowly becomes more and more formal over time.
This would seem to ‘beg’ the question of “what do you think this will hold for the future, especially when you look at the newer changes in deportment amongst the younger generations?”
I always find looking at clothing (as a concept) to be worthwhile in this regard. Most of the clothing we wear has a subtext where we want to be aligned with some group or perception of what we want others to see and think of us. This is, essentially, regimentation ‘lite’. This is, for many, the real political statements of their lives. What you wear, what you eat, where you go, who your friends are, the music you listen to…they are all means of personal expression, but you might be a fool if you think we live in a society filled with vibrant, real, creative, expressive people. We all copy….it’s just who we copy that varies.
If you look at how we use English, in speech and in writing, there are some similar (and often alarming) similarities to my thoughts about clothing. There are some subtle differences though, instead of casual being accepted as formal over time it is about ‘vulgarity’ and sloppiness being considered the norm over time.
There was a time when the language; or more precisely, the use of language was much more circumspect. From a modern perspective, some of this can be dismissed as post Victorian prudishness, but this doesn’t cover all of the changes. One merely has to spend some time reading almost anything written in the U.K. in the 19th century to see that it is more than prudishness that separates out current language from this more precise, and erudite use of the mother tongue.
Finally, I often wonder about how much what we wear, and how we speak defines the limits of what we can do… This is certainly a big question.
