I was looking at some family photos of my grandfathe, and he wore white suits from May to labor Day. Why did this custom cease?
I think white suits look nead-with a panama hat!
Because shorts are more comfortable. Not as elegant, perhaps, but when it’s 100 degrees outside, which is going to win, shorts and a T, or a natty seersucker?
Tom Wolfe still wears 'em.
But aside from the comfort issue – even if you have to wear a suit during summer, for whatever reason, you’re generally not going to wear a white one – hellish to keep clean.
But primarily, white suits were made of either cotton or linen, and worn in the American South when the weather was hot. Cotton and linen are hell to keep clean and pressed, and air conditioning and the development of polyester-wool blends reduced the need for “tropical weight” suits. The traditional white suit started to disappear as early as the 1950s and was pretty much dead by the end of the '60s.
Still see a few seersucker suits in these parts in the summer. I have one myself. It is nice and cool in the summer heat, when compared to wool. Of course, most seersucker suits are not strictly white. Blue and white or beige and white are most common.
The nice men that slide my dinner through the slot in my door invariably wear white suits.
After labor day of course!
Better example of tan seersucker.
When did Steve Martin take off his white suit for good? He has to be its most famous proponent.
Tom Wolfe stopped wearing them for a while in the 80s, claiming that John Travolta and Steve Martin ruined it for him. I’ve got a white herringbone blazer I wear a lot during the appropriate months, usually with khakis.
I suspect he retired it shortly after this photo was taken…
The leisure suit fad of the 70s brought back white shoes for men but that did not last long.
Miami Vice?
After enough of them spilled red wine in their laps.
White suits crashed in popularity after it was realized that the social costs were too great.
I still see people in white suits here occasionally, but we are in the tropics and it’s generally for semi-formal events.
They were occasionally seen in the Midwest before WW2 - it gets hot there, too - but there was no tradition as in the South. They did not reappear after the war.
You mean bucks? Esquire and GQ tout those a lot in summer months. I have a pair that I love, but can’t wear in muddy Seattle very often.