'Bedford, do you call this thing a coat?' The history of the three-piece suit

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2019

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

New Generation Thinker Sarah Goldsmith's Essay introduces an audience at York Festival of Ideasto Beau Brummel and others who have understood the mixed messages of suits through time.

England football coach Gareth Southgate's pitch-side waistcoats and 007's exquisite collection of Tom Ford suits all make one thing clear: sweatpants are out and the formal man's suit, along with its tailor, has triumphantly returned. From the colourful flamboyances of the eighteenth century to the dandy dictates of Beau Brummell and into the inky black 'Great Renunciation' of the nineteenth century, join Sarah Goldsmith for a whirlwind tour of the origins of the most ubiquitous, enduring item of male sartorial fashion and the 'second skin' of the male body, the three-piece suit.

Sarah Goldsmith is a historian of masculinity, the body and travel. She is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, an AHRC/BBC 2018 New Generation Thinker and a life-long rugby fan. Her first book, Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour, is being published in 2019.

Sarah Goldsmith on the C18 craze for weightlifting https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00040wg Sarah Golsmith discusses the body past and present on Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7my7k

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thank you for downloading the BBC Arts and Ideas podcast.
0:40.2	In this episode, we'll be asking what it is to be a man.
0:44.3	I'm Sophie Colombo, a new generation thinker.
0:47.3	That's a scheme run jointly by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and by the BBC
0:51.4	to help share some of the new research going on in our universities
0:55.0	with a wider audience. So that's what we'll bring you after this short message.
0:59.8	Hello, I'm composer Michael Barclay and I just want to let you know about my podcast, which I
1:05.1	think you might enjoy. It's called Private Passions. Every week a different guest chooses
1:09.9	the classical music they're passionate about.
1:12.8	People like Alan Bennett, Jan Ravens, Grayson Perry. And what I love about it is how much people
1:18.1	reveal of themselves when they're talking about and listening to the music which moves them.
1:23.9	Just search for private passions in BBC Sounds. Download the free app now.
1:29.9	Welcome to New Generation Thinkers, To Be a Man, a series of the essay recorded for BBC Radio
1:36.7	3 before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas 2019. Sarah Goldsmith, who did her PhD here at York, but is now a Leverhume Research Fellow at the
1:46.5	University of Leicester, is a historian of masculinity, the body and travel, an enviable research
1:53.3	combination if ever there was one. Her book on masculinity and danger on the 18th century grand
1:59.4	tour comes out this year.
2:01.5	But right now she's here to celebrate a timeless designer item, the three-piece suit.
2:07.8	Please welcome Sarah Goldsmith with Do You Call This Thing a Coat?
	...

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