Unbuttoned: an interactive history of the suit

To the modern eye, this man in his dark suit probably looks perfectly normal—perhaps even boring. But what if this ubiquitous uniform is actually one of the most powerful and heavily engineered political institutions in Western history?

Before the nineteenth century, elite men across the Western world dressed in vibrant silks, rich velvets, and sparkling embroidery, using fashion to display their social rank just as much as women did. However, in the wake of the American Revolution, a massive cultural shift occurred—the “Sartorial Revolution.” Between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, men renounced decorative fashion in favor of plain, dark, woolen suits.

The Founding Fathers used clothing to enact a new political reality. Men like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson purposefully adopted sober, unadorned suits to visually reject aristocratic luxury and the tyranny of European monarchies. Their new uniform was designed to reflect republican ideals of democracy, equality, and industry. But this equality was an illusion. The suit functioned as a visual boundary that granted civic authority and political power exclusively to white men, while using the language of fashion to cast women, Indigenous men, and Black men as feminine, primitive, or uncivilized, and therefore unfit for political power.

Click on the different elements of the suit below to uncover the hidden histories woven into its fabric. From the exploitation of land and labor required to produce its dark dyes and crisp white linens, to the mathematical tailoring that secretly sculpted an idealized male body, you will see how these seemingly mundane garments served as tools of social control. The history of the suit is the history of power, democracy, and the fashioning of modern men.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the modern suit is how boring it seems. That is exactly its power. By the mid-19th century, the suit became so plain, uniform, and ubiquitous that it practically turned invisible. It functioned as a “civic uniform” that united white men in a visual brotherhood of democratic equality. But this uniformity was exclusive. By defining serious, rational masculinity through the dark suit, society simultaneously codified anyone who didn’t wear it—women, Indigenous men, and Black men—as frivolous, savage, or unfit for political power. The suit didn’t just reflect social hierarchies; it actively enforced them.

_{Featured image: Thomas Sully, Joseph Dugan, 1810 (detail). National Gallery of Art, Washington.}