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It seems to me (maybe I am wrong?!) that the formal attire for men in the West has been uniform (as in "bland", not "military") for at least 100 years.

While moderately evolving in time, at any given moment the men style is fixed: a suite, a collared shirt, and a tie. The only variety are the colors of the shirt and tie (and, possibly, the number of buttons on the suite). Just look at an official political function, and you see men dressed identically, at least compared to the variety of women's styles.

On the other hand, it seems that 400 years ago men were allowed more stylistic variety (at least Dumas seems to spend as much time describing men's attire as women's).

When and Why did the change happen?

Related discussions that contain no relevant information:

PS. I want to explicitly exclude from consideration "peacock" events like Oscars.

This question is completely answered by Great Male Renunciation: French revolution and Sans-culottes.

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  • My preliminary research is seeing photos of men dresses uniformly and women dressed variously and reading descriptions of men and women dressed variously.
    – sds
    Commented Sep 2, 2022 at 14:51
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    Never mind peacock events - these tuxedos were popular amongst young tradesmen I knew at that time. Leisure suits were all the rage at clubs like Studio 54 for a time, not just in NYC and Cannes but all across North America at least.
    – Pieter Geerkens
    Commented Sep 2, 2022 at 16:04
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    As for the why, Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste seems to contain some investigation into this. Summarized by WP: "the cultural tastes of the dominant (ruling) class tend to dominate the tastes of the other social classes, forcing individual men and women of economically and culturally dominated classes to conform to the dominating aesthetic preferences, or risk "societal" (but in fact, fractional and domineering) disapproval – appearing crude, vulgar and tasteless."
    – ccprog
    Commented Sep 2, 2022 at 19:22
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    I think en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Male_Renunciation and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_tie provide some answers
    – Carlos Martin
    Commented Sep 2, 2022 at 19:22
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    @CarlosMartin - thank you, you answered my question.
    – sds
    Commented Sep 2, 2022 at 19:59

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