Medium: Wool

Date: c. 1975

Country: USA

Credit: Museum purchase

​The gray flannel suit became the unofficial uniform of the white collar American businessman during the mid-twentieth century. The suit’s ubiquity inspired the title of the 1955 book The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, in which the suit is a symbol of the middle class suburban experience in a postwar culture focused on upward mobility. The suit was worn to give the wearer increased social power, but it was also a sign of conformity.

Object Number: 2012.37.1