ON THIS DAY: October 15, 1666 – Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that King Charles II was wearing a vest. This new garment was described by Pepys as ‘a long cassock close to the body, of black cloth, and pinked with white silk under it, and a coat over it…’
This marked the first sighting of the waistcoat. Seventeenth-century male attire up to this point consisted of the doublet and hose, dictated by French fashion. However, on October 7, 1666, Charles II made a stand against France and issued a declaration that his court would no longer wear French fashions. He introduced his own court dress, which the diarist John Evelyn described as ‘the most graceful, virile, and useful mode that ever appeared at court’. The outfit included a sash, stockings, and buckled shoes, with no ruffles or accessories. At the time, it was known as the Persian vest. Tailored to fit the male figure, it lacked ribbons and gold thread and was made of English wool rather than silk. The fashion quickly caught on, and Pepys remarked several days later that ‘the court is all full of vests’ and promptly made an appointment with his tailor to have one made.
So began an English-French fashion war. King Louis XIV responded by ordering his footmen to wear vests in an attempt to debase the new English style. However, French courtiers soon adopted the English vest, albeit made in silk and adorned with gold trims. The waistcoat, as it became commonly known, grew shorter and increasingly flamboyant, eventually becoming a key part of the three-piece suit.
Memorable waistcoats have even appeared in movies. Clint Eastwood wore a distinctive sheepskin waistcoat in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). Who can forget Robert Redford’s white waistcoat in The Great Gatsby (1974) or Al Pacino’s pinstriped waistcoat in The Godfather (1972)? And of course the former England football manager Gareth Southgate recently brought them back into fashion, becoming a style icon during the 2018 World Cup and leading to a 41% increase in waistcoat sales in England.