重要的场合与时刻，没有一件西装怎么行？
即便你再怎么喜欢牛仔裤、运动裤或法蓝绒，也无法反驳订制西装独有的奢华感受，更别说随西装而来的权威感了。一百多年来，西装一直主导着衣柜，其简洁的剪裁，不管是参加会议、上教堂或到机尾酒吧，都能让人印象深刻。但西装愈来愈普遍也让我们忽略了西装的历史与其复杂的制作方式、象征性的力量还有许多重要的意义。
作者Christopher Breward在《西装的故事》抽丝剥茧，带着读者了解我们在熟悉不过的服装。他提到西装在十七世纪的出现反应出重要的政治对抗与现代社会的崛起。他谈到纺织业的技术发展并说明如何将技术融合在西装订制上，让其成为现代时尚的理想典范。为此，他走遍世界各地，尤其是南亚和东亚，在亚洲地区，西装就是西方文明的标志。Breward 提到，讽刺的是，最能代表征服和地位的西装，竟成为艺术家、音乐家和社会革命人士破坏霸权文化，扭转政治型态的完美工具。然后Breward再讨论到，女性也开始穿西装，西装在这件事及性别上所代表的意义。最后，他提到，现代商业社会兴起的“随性休闲风”正大大减少西装的出现，“西装”是否能继续留在现代社会中，还是终将成为人类的想像？
好评
Wall Street Journal
“Expertly shows how the adoption of the suit was a manifestation of societal change as the great European wars of the 17th and 18th centuries morphed into the Industrial Revolution and thereon into the modern democratic world. Indeed, it would be hard to name another facet of our modern culture that has so effortlessly and variously expressed the cross-purposes of, say, Baudelaire, Le Corbusier, and Mao Zedong. The suit is the perfect signifier, and as Mr. Breward shows, it carries all the noble, artistic, economic, and perverse impulses of our culture.”
Financial Times
“The Suit has its own spare, modernist elegance. It presents a decisively uncluttered history of menswear, cutting a clean line through eighteenth-century French military uniforms to dandies, Pasolini films and twentieth-century Italian tailoring, all the while insisting on the suit’s ‘all-pervasive influence in modern and contemporary cultures.'”
Literary Review
“[Breward] is knowledgeable about his subject, insightful in his analysis, and imaginative in the connections that he makes. The result is a thoughtful and at times lively riffle through the male wardrobe from Restoration England onward.”
Bookseller
“An attractively illustrated history unpicking the story of the gentleman’s tailored suit from its emergence in Western Europe at the end of the 17th century to its fate in the 21st century.”
Metropolis
“Metropolis Summer Reading List 2016. . . . A scholarly history of sartorial style, a dialectic between peacock fashions and their renunciation.”
Times Literary Supplement
“Breward offers a compendious account of the evolution of the suit from the gaudily decorated outfits of the Elizabethen court, through the luxury textile trade, to the genesis of something like the modern idea of well-dressed manhood (essentially, expensive understatement) in the nineteenth-century Parisian cult of the dandy. . . . When Breward ventures beyond just telling his story to speculate a little on the cultural resonances behind it, he does so with a sharp, laconic intelligence.”
World of Interiors
“Breward’s intelligent consideration of the suit is an antidote to all the bombastic ‘how to’ guides written by fashion journalists and bloggers whose idea of cultural context is to speed read a Wikipedia page. . . . a rich, deep, and satisfying study.”
Journal of Design History
“Breward’s book on the history and culture of the gentleman’s suit is a handsome, hardback volume with a generous number of large-format illustrations. . . . His is not a straightforward, object-oriented interpretation; what makes the book such a clever and rewarding read lies in how Breward assumes the position of a tailor in tackling a cultural history of the suit, as if fashioning a garment in material form. This is a book crafted by the measuring, marking, aligning, fitting and shaping of evidence. Just as the seam allowances of a bespoke suit allow its proportions to be altered to fit a body modified by the regimes and excesses of life, so Breward appreciates that cultural and material histories are also malleable, with margins that can be redrawn and reassembled.”
Ed Burstell, Managing Director, Liberty
“Spirited and well researched, The Suit: Form, Function and Style is a thoroughly informed examination of the ubiquitous garment that is a staple in every man’s life. Combining both substance and style, it provides a journey into the evolution of the suit and its cultural influence through the ages.”
G. Bruce Boyer, author of True Style: The History and Principles of Classic Menswear, Rebel Style, and Gary Cooper: Enduring Style
“In its long history the suit has been both a symbol of adherence to mainstream authority as well as a weapon of rebellion. In this book, Breward masterfully traces the suit’s influence in modern and contemporary cultures with thorough scholarship and vivid writing. The Suit is a magical tour of the corporeal terrain of the garment that continues to intrigue us as it reflects the ever-changing economic and cultural contexts in which it is found. A triumph of scholarship and a joy to read.”
Simon Doonan, Creative Ambassador for Barneys New York and author of The Asylum: True Tales of Madness from a Life in Fashion
“Breward climbs into every armhole and measures every inside leg. He stops at nothing to decode the enigmas of men’s tailoring.”
关于作者
Christopher Breward是爱丁堡艺术学院的校长也是爱丁堡大学文化历史教授。他也是一位作者，作品包括：The Hidden Consumer (1999)、Fashion (2003) 与 Fashioning London (2004)。
