CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A conversation with Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe in 2008 planted the seed for a new book about men’s formalwear. Chloe Chapin, Ph.D. ’23, spent two decades as a costume designer before writing “Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men.” Radcliffe was starring in the Broadway play “Equus” at the time. Chapin designed the costumes.
She complimented the midnight blue tuxedo he wore to the opening night party. Radcliffe told her about British royalty wearing midnight blue for formal occasions.
Chapin found the story glamorous and fascinating. She filed it away. Years later, while doing research for the opera “La Traviata,” set in the 1860s, the question resurfaced with new urgency.
Costume designers develop a mental database of images across centuries. Chapin had one.
Scrolling back in her mind, she noticed something odd. Men in the 18th century had not worn black and white at all for formal occasions. Within half a century, that changed.
They adopted a plain uniform of black and white that persists to this day. “Why did they suddenly adopt this plain uniform?” Chapin asks in an edited interview published by Harvard. Her answer points to the American and French revolutions.
The book examines a 75-year period between the 18th and 19th centuries. Enlightenment ideas of liberty and equality gave rise to those revolutions.
Those same ideas, Chapin argues, fundamentally changed how men dressed. The adoption of plain and dark suits came to symbolize American republican ideals of democracy and equality. The flamboyant silks of the 18th century gave way to the modern uniform of dark suits.
The transformation was not about fashion. It was about political philosophy stitched into cloth.
Chapin traces the history of men’s fashion from those silks to today’s boardroom standard. The book is a study of how Enlightenment ideals reshaped the male wardrobe. The plain suit became a statement.
A man in a dark suit was a man who believed in equality. He was not trying to outshine his neighbor. For readers who have ever wondered why Dad’s uniform looks the way it does, Chapin has an answer.
It is rooted in revolutions fought across the Atlantic. It is rooted in ideas about what a free man should wear.
The book is not a dry academic text. Chapin brings her designer’s eye to the material. She knows fabric.
She knows cut. She knows what a midnight blue tuxedo says at a party.
She also knows what a black suit says in a courtroom or a boardroom. Cambridge is an appropriate place for this work to land. The city is home to Harvard, where Chapin earned her doctorate.
It is a place where ideas about democracy and equality have been debated for centuries. It is also a place where the uniform of the dark suit is worn daily by professors, lawyers, and students alike. The 75-year period Chapin examines is a blink in fashion history.
Yet it produced a look that has lasted more than two centuries. Men still wear black and white to formal events.
They still wear dark suits to work. The uniform has not changed much since the 19th century. Chapin’s book asks why that is.
The answer is not about comfort or practicality. It is about how revolutions change everything, even the clothes on your back.
