French

This plate from the trade journal Bulletin of Fashion illustrates men's fashions from the mid-19th century. This period is often understood as the "great masculine renunciation," as codified by psychologist J. C. Flugel in his 1932 text The Psychology of Clothes. Modern scholarship and research has revealed that while many men were lost in a sea of black suits, there were others, like those idealized in this fashion plate, who continued to relish the personal choice and liberty of dress.