(un)suited

"In the course of the nineteenth century the image of the ideal gentleman rapidly shed the remnants of the eighteenth-century courtliness and assumed the aspect of the solid, substantial, inexpressive businessman. The colors of the wardrobe grew progressively somber. The New York Knickerbocker Abram Dayton recalled that by the 1830s 'black was the prevailing color' among fashionable young men of the city; 'it was worn for promenade, parlor, church, ball, business,' and 'in such uniformity of style, as effectively to destroy all individuality.'... By the later nineteenth century the modern suit developed in Europe and America and became the requisite costume -- virtually the anonymous uniform -- of the business culture."

-- Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America, John F. Kasson, 1990, p. 118.