Published on June 10, 2026 (Episode 458)
Introduction
At his first inauguration, George Washington made a very carefully calibrated political statement: he wore a brown suit. It was tailored from a weave of superfine wool made in Hartford, Connecticut, and was so far from being the crude homespun which was for some an emblem of a proud American—or, for British cartoonists, of crude Brother Jonathan—that some newspapers criticized Washington for wearing a suit of imported fabric. The cloth seemed too good to have been made in America.
But Washington wore two suits that day. In the evening, at the inaugural ball, he wore a suit of imported purple silk. The choice of these two suits, argues my guest Chloe Chapin in her new book Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men, shows a dividing line between two eras: an eighteenth century of Washington’s youth and early middle age in which men wore a wide variety of textiles in a cornucopia of colors and textures; and a democratic age in which drab and severe signaled liberty and equality among men.
What follows is not merely a history of clothing. It is a history of politics, technology, labor, consumption, social hierarchy, democracy, empire, and masculinity itself. Why did men abandon color? How hard is it to make black suits and white shirts? Why in the new democratic society did men increasingly dress alike? And what did that do to concepts of race and gender?
About the Guest
Chloe Chapin holds a PhD in American Studies and has worked for more than two decades as a costume designer for Broadway productions, opera companies, and Shakespeare festivals. Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men is her first book.
For Further Investigation
Chloe Chapin, Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men (Oxford University Press, 2026)
Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. Second Edition. (Vintage, 2011)
Laura Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (Vintage, 2009)
John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence: the Yale version, an oil sketch which he reworked over the years, is pretty drab; the final version in the Capitol might be even drabber
The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC: for explorations in imagining fabric
Related Episodes
The Stories in Shoes: Kimberly Alexander on Fashion and Material Culture
New England Fashion: Kimberly Alexander on Why That’s Not an Oxymoron
Tags
American Revolution; Early Republic; Material Culture; Fashion History; Men’s Fashion; George Washington; Social History; Cultural History; Historical Thinking; Chloe Chapin
