CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The midnight blue tuxedo that actor Daniel Radcliffe wore to a Broadway opening night in 2008 set off a chain of historical inquiry that now threatens to upend how men understand their own closets. Chloe Chapin, the costume designer who complimented that tuxedo, has spent years tracing what she calls a “sartorial revolution.” Her new book argues that the plain dark suit men wear today is a direct inheritance from the American and French revolutions.
But the deeper implication is unsettling: men may be trapped in a uniform they never consciously chose. Chapin, Ph.D. ’23, spent over two decades as a costume designer before writing “Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men.” The book covers a 75-year window between the 18th and 19th centuries.
During that period, Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality reshaped politics — and, Chapin argues, men’s clothing. She noticed the shift while scrolling through her mental database of historical images. Eighteenth-century gentlemen wore flamboyant silks.
Half a century later, they had adopted black and white. “Why did they suddenly adopt this plain uniform?” she asks in an edited interview published by Harvard.
The risk is not merely academic. If the modern suit is a political symbol dressed up as fashion, then men who wear it may be unwittingly reinforcing a system of conformity that has lasted more than 200 years. The suit, Chapin suggests, came to symbolize American republican ideals of democracy and equality.
That sounds noble. But it also means that the dark suit, worn by bankers and baristas alike, may be the most enduring propaganda tool of the Enlightenment. What could go wrong next?
The uniform persists. Men still wear black and white for formal occasions.
Weddings, funerals, court appearances, business meetings — the same palette that emerged in the wake of revolution. Chapin’s research suggests this is not a natural evolution. It was a deliberate adoption.
The question she poses is whether men today have any real choice in the matter. The idea for the book came when Chapin complimented Radcliffe on his midnight blue tuxedo at the opening night party for the Broadway play “Equus,” for which she designed costumes.
Radcliffe told her about British royalty wearing midnight blue for formalwear. Chapin found the story glamorous and fascinating. Years later, while doing research for the opera “La Traviata,” set in the 1860s, her interest reignited.
What is being done to prevent the further entrenchment of this uniform? Chapin’s book itself is a kind of intervention. By exposing the political origins of men’s formal dress, she opens the door for men to question it.
If the suit is not inevitable but historical, then it can be changed. But there is no organized movement.
No fashion council has issued a statement. The suit remains the default for power and respectability. The danger is that men will continue to dress for a revolution that ended two centuries ago.
Chapin’s work does not prescribe a new uniform. It simply asks why the old one persists.
That question, unanswered, leaves men standing in their dark suits, dressed for a world that may no longer exist.
