Clio's Review: Suitable
Chloe Chapin, Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men (Oxford University Press, 2026).
The ubiquitous plain dark suit. We hardly think of it as fashion at all. But as Chloe Chapin argues in Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men, that apparent neutrality is itself a historical creation. Tracing men’s dress from the American Revolution through the Civil War, Chapin shows how the suit became intertwined with emerging ideas about masculinity, democracy, respectability, and power.
Placing the phenomenon alongside the political and economic revolutions that reshaped the early United States, Chapin calls this transformation the “Sartorial Revolution.” It was a moment when men abandoned the colorful fabrics and elaborate ornamentation of eighteenth-century fashion for increasingly plain, dark clothing. The Founding Fathers were important participants in that transformation. Using fashion to communicate sober republican virtue, their sartorial choices also inadvertently helped establish enduring ideas about what authority should look like.
One of the book’s great strengths is Chapin’s attention to clothing as material culture. A former theatrical costume designer, she brings a designer’s eye to the analysis of fabric, tailoring, manufacture, bodies, and movement while situating those details within larger histories of gender, labor, politics, and consumer culture. The result is both a significant work of scholarship and a book that is genuinely interesting to read.
Perhaps most compelling is Chapin’s argument that the suit’s power lies partly in our failure to see it. But what came to appear simply practical or respectable was never neutral. The suit helped make masculine authority appear natural while relegating the increasingly perceived frivolities of fashion to the feminine. That history remains remarkably relevant in a world where a politician’s sartorial choices are mercilessly scrutinized and women continue to grapple with expectations about who looks like a leader.
I thoroughly enjoyed Suitable. It is an original, illuminating history that will change the way you look at something hiding in plain sight.
Listen to or watch my conversation with Chloe Chapin where we discuss the Founding Fathers as fashion icons, the politics and power of the business suit, and why plain is never really neutral.
And buy the book! It will transform what you see when you look at a suit.
