"Striped-pants diplomat"?

[Cervaise]

I encountered the phrase in the thread title a few days ago in some news article or other, which I cannot now locate. It struck me oddly, because I’d never seen it before, and yet the writer used the phrase casually, in passing, like it was a well-known piece of colloquial currency.

A little Googling sufficed to prove that the phrase is not unknown, though hardly overwhelmingly common (4100 hits in various configurations), and refers to some traditional conception of men in striped pants as being “effete.” I can sort of see that, generally speaking: a citified dandy serving an ambassadorial role on the frontier, and such.

I’m still curious about the origins of the phrase, though. Is it American? British? Either would be plausible; images come to mind of an East-Coast type in a California gold-rush town, say, or, alternatively, an insulated Oxfordite posted to Central India.

Can anyone shed any light on this? And does the fact that I’d never seen the expression before represent an accurate perception that the phrase has fallen out of common usage, or does it represent a gap in my reading?

[matt_mcl]

At one point, standard dress for (male) diplomats was a particular type of suit (‘morning dress’? I forget and don’t have access to my references) that featured pinstriped pants.

[Alessan]

@matt_mcl

At one point, standard dress for (male) diplomats was a particular type of suit (‘morning dress’? I forget and don’t have access to my references) that featured pinstriped pants.

Something like this, I suppose.

[Northern_Piper]

I think matt’s got it. similarly, the complete court togs for British barristers includes striped trousers.

At a guess, I would assume it’s an American phrase, because in British English, “pants” mean an undergarment.

[MikeS]

It’s common enough to be in the OED:

striped trousers (typically worn by civil servants, businessmen, etc.), used allusively to indicate the wearer’s status, and, by extension, bureaucracy, formality, etc.; by metonymy, a civil servant, etc.; so striped-trouser(ed) adj.; similarly (chiefly U.S.) striped pants.

So not so much “effete” as “bureaucratic and formal”.

The citations provided, BTW, range from 1933 to 1981 — but the OED’s citations are rarely chronologically representative.

[Tom_Tildrum]

The first picture here is another example. This website notes that the morning coat and striped trousers is today seen in the US chiefly at showy weddings.

[Kent_Clark]

Here’s a photo of the official Japanese surrenderin 1945. Note that the civilians are wearing top hats, morning coats and striped pants, while the military officers are in full dress uniforms. Really important state ceremonies required really formal dress (not like the basic business suits the diplomatic bureaucrats would wear while conducting day-to-day business.)

And since the official ceremony required the presence of the ambassador, and the ambassador would be decked out, the connection to the striped pants was natural.

Look carefully at this photo of John F. Kennedy’s funeral procession and you’ll see both Robert (left) and Ted (right) Kennedy are wearing the full-dress outfits.

The image of the ineffectual striped-pants diplomat was probably sealed by Neville Chamberlain wearing a morning coat in photos with Hitler at Munich.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

I remember Philip K. Dick in his alt-history WW2 novel The Man In the High Castle referred to a meeting at a Japanese embassy; a visitor immediately knew who the diplomats were because of their striped pants.