Following Suit: Men,Masculinity and Gendered Practices in the Clothing Trade in Leeds,England, 1890–1940

This paper explores the processes by which the majority of British men came to wear a suit for most occasions during the first part of the twentieth century. It examines the nature of the product and emphasises the gendered experience of making and buying suits. Using the Leeds tailoring trade as a case study, it concludes that the rise of the suit can be attributed to the gendering of production – whereby the intensification of low–paid female labour sustained profitability – and to the gendering of consumption, in which the masculinity of the shopping environment was crucial.