The History of the Tailcoat: From Riding Coat to White Tie

For most of the eighteenth century, a gentleman's coat was long and full, with skirts that reached toward the knee all the way around. That shape was elegant when standing but clumsy on horseback, where the front skirts bunched over the thighs. English country gentlemen, who spent a great deal of time riding, increasingly wore coats whose fronts were cut back in a slope from the waist, leaving the skirts to fall behind.

By the last decades of the century this cut-away coat had moved from the stable yard into town. It was usually made in plain wool cloth rather than the embroidered silks of court dress, and it carried an air of sober English practicality that became fashionable well beyond England. The high turned-down collar, the cutaway front and the long back skirts are all recognizable ancestors of the modern tailcoat.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century, the fronts of the coat were cut more sharply. Instead of sloping away gradually, many coats were cut straight across at the waist, leaving a squared front and two distinct tails at the back. This is the form we now call the dress coat. During the Regency it was worn in the daytime as well as the evening, often in blue, green or brown cloth, with light-coloured breeches or the new close-fitting trousers.

The period's emphasis on fit, plain dark cloth and spotless linen is often associated with Beau Brummell, whose influence on English dress is widely acknowledged even if individual anecdotes about him are hard to verify. Whatever the role of any one person, the overall direction is clear: men's clothing became less decorative and more dependent on cut.

As the nineteenth century went on, other coats took over daytime wear, first the frock coat and later the morning coat. The dress coat retreated to the evening, and its colour settled on black. By the mid-Victorian decades the black tailcoat with matching trousers was the standard evening dress for a gentleman, and it stayed so until the shorter dinner jacket began to offer an alternative later in the century.

Two coats with tails survive in formal wear, and they are easy to confuse. The difference lies in how the front is cut.

The evening dress coat is cut straight across at the waist. Its fronts end in a horizontal line level with the natural waist, and the tails begin only at the sides and back. It is normally worn open, and the buttons on the front are usually decorative. The morning coat, sometimes called a cutaway, fastens with a single button at the waist and then curves gently away toward the back, so the front edge forms a continuous sweep from the button to the tails. It is a daytime garment.

• Evening dress coat: horizontal cut at the waist, worn open, black or midnight blue, for white tie in the evening.
• Morning coat: front curving away from a single waist button, black or grey, for formal daytime occasions.
• Both have a waist seam, a separately cut skirt and a back vent between the tails.

The tailcoat is the centrepiece of white tie, the most formal evening dress code still in use. The ensemble is strict and every element has a purpose.

The waistcoat is traditionally the point most often got wrong. It should be short enough that it does not show below the squared front of the coat, which means a white-tie waistcoat is cut noticeably shorter than a daytime one. Many evening waistcoats are made with a low, open front and some with a backless construction held by straps, which keeps them light under the coat.

• A black (or very dark midnight blue) tailcoat with silk-faced lapels.
• Matching trousers, high-waisted and worn with braces, usually trimmed with braid along the outer leg; two narrow rows are the traditional choice.
• A white shirt with a stiff bib front, usually of piqué, and a detachable or attached wing collar.
• A white piqué waistcoat, low-cut, single or double-breasted.
• A white piqué bow tie, tied by hand.
• Shirt studs and cufflinks, and black patent or highly polished shoes.

The tailcoat is a fitted coat, and much of its shape comes from the waist seam. The body above the waist is cut in the usual tailoring pieces: fronts, side bodies and back. At the waist, these are joined to a separately cut skirt that forms the tails. Cutting the skirt separately allows the tailor to shape the body closely to the waist and then let the tails fall cleanly over the seat without pulling.

At the back, the two tails are separated by a vent that runs from the waist seam to the hem. Each side of the back usually carries a fold or pleat beneath the waist, finished at the top with a button on the waist seam. The pleats let the tails part and move when the wearer sits or walks. The length of the tails is traditionally taken to around the back of the knee, though exact proportions vary with the wearer's height and taste.

Because the front stops at the waist, balance matters more than on an ordinary jacket. If the front is too long or the back too short, the squared front will tilt or gape. If the tails are cut without enough width, they spread apart at the hem instead of hanging together. These are drafting problems as much as sewing ones, and they are the reason tailcoats were long considered a test of a cutter's skill.

White tie is now rare, but it has not disappeared. It is still the expected dress at certain state and royal banquets, at formal balls such as the Viennese ball season, at a number of academic and civic dinners, and at the Nobel Prize banquet in Stockholm. Orchestral musicians and conductors in many concert halls wear tails for evening performances, and ballroom dancers have adapted the coat for competition, often with a closer fit and a lighter cloth.

Weddings have become one of the most common reasons to wear a tailcoat. Some grooms choose a full white-tie outfit for an evening ceremony, while others adopt the coat on its own with a coloured waistcoat for a less strict look. Theatrical and historical costume uses tailcoats of every period, from Regency coloured cloth to late-Victorian black.

The history of the tailcoat explains why it is hard to buy off the rack. The coat depends on a close waist, a precise front length and tails that are balanced to the wearer's back and seat. Standard sizes tend to compromise all three. A pattern drafted to your own measurements starts with those relationships already set for your body, so the work of sewing goes into construction rather than correction.

In the Minerva Patterns catalog you will find the 6074 Formal Tailcoat, the 6079 Men's Formal Tailcoat Jacket and the 6081 Single-Breasted Tailcoat with Double-Button Front. For the waistcoat, the 6076 Men's Evening Waistcoat with Satin Collar is one option. Each pattern is drafted from the measurements you enter and supplied as a PDF, a projector file, PLT or DXF AAMA, so you can print it, project it or bring it into pattern software.

Whatever pattern you use, make a toile in an inexpensive cloth first, check the front edge at the waist and the hang of the tails, and only then cut your evening wool. A tailcoat that fits is still the clearest sign of careful tailoring.