I'm sorry for putting this here three days late but I hope you still enjoy the write up!
The 3 piece suit (jacket, vest, pants) dates to the European court fashions of the late 17th century. (Prior to the invention of the suit you maybe wore something like this guy)
At the start of the 18th century a suit looked like so, although this is most likely for a boy. In the 18th century you also had three options for your suiting fabrics - "suit in ditto" where all three pieces were made of the same fabric (as with the 3D example above), having the jacket and pants match with a coordinating waistcoat or having all three pieces in a different but coordinating fabric. The last option was considered quite posh because it meant the wearer had to “bespoke” (reserve) three bolts of fabric which cost more money than one bolt of fabric. These last two options have disappeared in suiting fabrics.
You would wear your suit in the 18th century all around town, but at home you would change out of your suit coat and into something called a banyan which was a fancy housecoat.
You may notice the tie is missing! The neckcloth was white, and pretty essential, unlike a modern tie, as your shirt didn’t have buttons and your neckcloth had to actually cover your neck.
Around the start of 19th century the fabulous colors went away and suiting fabrics moved to the dreary drabs we have today. The influence of Beau Brummell in this area really can’t be understated, as he was a main driver in dandism fashions. Here’s a labeled caricature of him. You’ll notice the pants have come down, and the “cutaway” jacket has been invented, which we still have in highly formal dress ("top hat, white tie, and tails" look or formal morning dress, which is rarer but still around) while the short pants were completely abandoned. Still no tie!
Around the mid 19th century darker neckcloths instead of white become popular, moving from a very casual (country) look to gradually more acceptable in formal settings. They are really starting to look like a modern tie around now. Oxford English dictionary has the marjority of its uses of the word “tie” appearing in after 1860. Around the end of the 19th century the less formal “sack coat” (short coat) also took over for the dominant style of suiting jacket over the long frock coat which had been around for about 200 years, giving us a modern suit in ditto with a short coat and tie safely around 1900. So your suit, as you know it, is only about 100 years old!
The more interesting question here is, why did the suit become so formal? In the 18th-19th centuries your suit would have been no more formal to you than khakis and a polo, or maybe “good jeans” and a button down shirt. Now you scoot around town in a suit all day people will assume you’re a lawyer. (To which I don’t have the answer!)
Thats a really interesting history of the suit
