I love fashion history. There is so much social history tied up in it.
Excerpts:
Savile Row was inhabited largely by surgeons before the tailors moved in during the 19th century, and their influence can be seen in the “surgeon’s cuff”. On the most expensive suits the cuff buttons, which mirror the pips of military rank, can be undone, allowing the sleeve to be rolled back. This let surgeons attend patients spouting blood without removing their coats—an important distinction that set them apart from shirt-sleeved tradesmen of the lower orders. Surgeon’s shirts, with detachable cuffs, are still made to order by London tailors.
And:
Colours and cuts come—the fashion a decade ago was for four-button jackets—and go. Yet the modern world has transformed the suit’s interior. Pockets for train and bus tickets appeared with the commuter. Pen pockets and pockets for mobile phones have followed. Mr Munday has fielded inquiries about internal pockets to hold an iPad. No problem, he says. They are not so very different to the large “hare” pockets on the inside of field coats worn by country gents that will hold birds and rabbits felled with a shotgun.
Excerpts:
Savile Row was inhabited largely by surgeons before the tailors moved in during the 19th century, and their influence can be seen in the “surgeon’s cuff”. On the most expensive suits the cuff buttons, which mirror the pips of military rank, can be undone, allowing the sleeve to be rolled back. This let surgeons attend patients spouting blood without removing their coats—an important distinction that set them apart from shirt-sleeved tradesmen of the lower orders. Surgeon’s shirts, with detachable cuffs, are still made to order by London tailors.
And:
Colours and cuts come—the fashion a decade ago was for four-button jackets—and go. Yet the modern world has transformed the suit’s interior. Pockets for train and bus tickets appeared with the commuter. Pen pockets and pockets for mobile phones have followed. Mr Munday has fielded inquiries about internal pockets to hold an iPad. No problem, he says. They are not so very different to the large “hare” pockets on the inside of field coats worn by country gents that will hold birds and rabbits felled with a shotgun.