Sex and Suits

From medieval tunics to the modern business suit, men's clothing-combining ease of use, cohesive formal design and a reflection of underlying bodily shape and movement-has been more advanced and liberating than women's fashions, the author shows. Why has the man's suit endured as a basic fashion item? Why have women wanted ``so desperately'' to copy male tailoring? This iconoclastic, continually stimulating essay argues that women's clothes, even after 1800, slavishly echoed ancient, traditional sartorial custom; modernizing women's clothing has meant copying men's garments, directly or indirectly. Aided by paintings, old prints and society and fashion photographs, art historian Hollander (Seeing Through Clothes) deciphers the fluctuating aesthetic and sexual messages encoded in men's and women's clothing through the centuries. She invisions a postmodern future when both sexes will wear a new standard, androgynous costume, and in leisure time men and women will share equally in all the possibilities of robes, skirts, cosmetics, historic styles and adornments. (Sept.)