I have a particular fondness for wash-and-wear suits. It’s not just the convenience factor, although I appreciate not having to take all my suits to the dry cleaners during the sweaty summer months. We’re all living in a casual culture, and wash-and-wear suits have a relaxed nature to them that fits right in. By wearing a suit you may be out-dressing everyone else in your office, but an unstructured cotton or cotton-blend suit can be one of the most comfortable pieces of clothing you can wear while still having a stylish, carefree feel. Every year I look forward to putting on my casual summer suits, and my favorite is made of seersucker.
Seersucker is a material that is most commonly associated with the American South. Southern lawyers in steamy courtrooms, sultry summer afternoons, and horse races like the Kentucky Derby are all intertwined with the famously striped cotton fabric in the popular imagination, to the degree that a seersucker suit might seem like a costume from an old-fashioned movie. While today you’re most likely to see seersucker worn at outdoor summer events or Kentucky Derby parties, it is a practical fabric that has a long history that spans settings from factory floors to Wall Street offices.
Seersucker is a very distinctive material, notable both for its classic blue and white stripes and its puckered texture. It came about in Southern Asia, where it got its name from its characteristic stripes. Originally in white and tan, the color mixture was given the name “shir shakar,” meaning milk and sugar in Persian. Passing through Hindi into English, it became known as seersucker to the British who had taken control of India. The fabric’s distinctive texture is the result of a unique slack-tension weaving technique. This texture allows air to circulate under the garment and near the skin, keeping the wearer cool in hot temperatures. Because of a combination of the weave and tough cotton fibers, it also naturally springs back after wear and washing, meaning that seersucker almost never needs to be pressed. These factors made it a favorite among people in tropical settings, including the Southern United States.
Seersucker’s reputation for being hard-wearing and easy to clean made it a popular material for work wear throughout the 19th century. It was often used to make overalls for farmers, factory workers, and train drivers who worked in blazing hot conditions, as the lightweight, breathable material kept them from overheating. These practical attributes caught the attention of southern haberdashers, particularly in the shipping hub of New Orleans, and the material began its journey from the factory floor to the halls of power. Seersucker suits first appeared around the 1860s and grew in popularity through the rest of the century. The design was quickly picked up by many manufacturers and spread throughout the southern United States, where seersucker suiting became acceptable in all settings during the summer months. By the 1880s, even congressmen were seen to be wearing seersucker, a practical necessity in the brutal humidity of a Washington, DC Summer. After the First World War, increased tourism to the Gulf Coast made tropical climates where seersucker was worn more available to Northerners, who adopted the comfortable material for summer wear in their home states. During the 1920s students at Ivy League universities began wearing seersucker, and as they moved from college campuses to Manhattan offices, their suits came with them. In 1937, New Orleans-based clothing company Haspel put out their first wash-and-wear seersucker suit, capitalizing on the fabric’s resilience to allow customers to easily launder their own suits at home.
The increased use of air conditioning in the 1950s and 60s eventually led to the disappearance of seersucker from offices, and it retreated to summer events like July 4th celebrations or horse races. Since 1996, the United States Senate has celebrated Seersucker Thursday in June, on which Senators commemorate classic Southern style by wearing seersucker suits to work. It made a brief comeback among African-American men in the 1970s who used it to reconnect with their southern roots, and seersucker shorts and shirts have always been a preppy standby. Now, with the increasingly warm climate and a greater interest in casual suiting, more companies are bringing seersucker back into their Spring/Summer lines.
While seersucker is traditionally woven from one hundred-percent cotton, the weave is now available in tropical-weight wool, wool and silk, or wool and cotton blends, which can add a more refined character to the final product. You can also depart from the ordinary blue and white stripe for something more muted like beige and white or solid navy, or brighter colors like green or red stripes as well, and seersucker shirts are a cool-wearing alternative for those who aren’t sure they want to wear a full suit. While I’m planning on suiting up all summer I also have my eye on a tobacco-brown camp collar shirt, so I plan on wearing seersucker in every form and in every setting until October, and you should too.
Check out the NYFG podcast episode on seersucker
Eric Langlois
Eric Langlois is a writer, menswear professional, and history enthusiast based on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
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