The Black Lounge Jacket: A History of the Stroller and Where It Fits in Morning Dress
Somewhere between the morning coat and the business suit sits a jacket most people have seen without ever learning its name. The black lounge jacket, or stroller, once dressed half the professional classes of London. In this video, stylist Chris Modoo explains what it is, who still wears it, and why he owns one made twenty years ago that he refuses to give up.
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What Is a Black Lounge Jacket?
A black lounge jacket is, at first glance, exactly what it sounds like: an ordinary suit jacket, cut like the one you wear to work, in black or occasionally a very dark Oxford grey. The Americans call it a stroller, which is snappier and marginally less likely to be confused with furniture. On the Continent it has been known as a Stresemann, after the German foreign minister who wore a shorter jacket to sign the Locarno treaties in 1925 and, in doing so, gave half of Europe permission to do the same. Britain has also called it a Marlborough suit, though nobody has done so recently without being asked to explain themselves.
What makes it interesting is where you wear it. The black lounge jacket sits in the same wardrobe territory as morning dress: worn with a contrasting or matching waistcoat, striped or checked formal trousers, a proper shirt and a regular tie. Everything, in other words, that you would put with a morning coat, except that the long coat has been swapped for a shorter jacket. It is the halfway house between the tailcoat and the business suit, and for several decades of the twentieth century it was the uniform of the man who needed to look serious before lunch.
A popular shorthand online holds that white tie relates to morning dress the way black tie relates to the black lounge jacket: a formal original and its shortened understudy. It is a tidy theory and we can see the appeal. Chris takes a different view, and we think he is right. The stroller is best understood as part of morning dress itself: a variation on the theme rather than a separate dress code with its own rulebook. The accessories are the same, the trousers are the same, the occasions overlap almost entirely. Only the jacket has changed.
A shorter kind of formality
Where the Stroller Fits in Morning Dress History
To understand the black lounge jacket you have to remember that the morning coat was itself once the informal option. Before it, morning dress meant a frock coat, that solemn knee-length garment beloved of Victorian statesmen and photographers who needed their subjects to stand still for a very long time. The morning coat displaced the frock coat gradually, and then, after the First World War, the lounge suit began its long conquest of the male wardrobe. As business dress relaxed, a black lounge jacket worn with striped trousers became the accepted substitute for the morning coat in offices, banks and chambers.
The logic was partly practical and partly economic. A man could own one good black jacket, a couple of waistcoats and two or three pairs of formal trousers, and from those few pieces assemble a remarkable number of outfits. When the trousers wore out, he replaced the trousers and kept the jacket. Compare that with a suit, where worn-out trousers leave you holding an orphaned jacket and a vague sense of injustice. The black lounge jacket was, in its quiet way, one of the more sensible systems of dressing the twentieth century produced, and its disappearance had nothing to do with sense.
It was never, it should be said, the top rung. The stroller was not worn at Royal Ascot then and it is not appropriate for the Royal Enclosure now. It occupied the level just below: formal daywear for business and ceremony, where a tailcoat would have been slightly too much and a suit slightly too little.
Survivals and ceremonies
Who Still Wears the Black Lounge Jacket Today
Very few people, is the honest answer, but the exceptions are worth knowing. Freemasons wear it as their morning dress for meetings, which is less of a secret than you might imagine. It survives as a kind of corporate uniform in traditional hotels and restaurants, where the managing director or the concierge wears a version of it as a signal that standards are being maintained somewhere on the premises. And it persists in ceremonial life, which is where Chris's own jacket comes in.
Twenty years ago, working for a traditional tailor in the City of London, Chris was part of the team that helped dress ceremonies such as the Order of the Garter and the Order of the Bath. Staff representing the firm at Buckingham Palace were required to wear morning dress, with a choice: the full tailcoat, or the shorter black jacket that most people sensibly chose. Garter Day falls in June, the work involves kneeling over tabards with a mouthful of safety pins, and the day ends with a great deal of carrying. A lightweight black jacket wins that argument every time.
His jacket, made in Portugal, departs from the standard issue in ways that repay a second look. The traditional off-the-peg version is a two-button notch lapel in black herringbone, the cloth you would find in any suitably old-fashioned menswear shop. Chris had his made instead in an Italian hopsack, that open, breathable weave that makes June bearable, with a silk-taped collar edge and a small detail at the cuff of the kind you find on older morning coats. Small decisions, all of them, and together they turn a uniform into a garment. Hopsack, incidentally, is a weave we return to again and again in our own tailored jacket collection, and for exactly the reason Chris chose it: it breathes when the weather refuses to.
Anatomy of an outfit
How a Black Lounge Jacket Is Worn: Waistcoat, Trousers and Tie
The accessories are where the stroller declares its membership of morning dress. Chris always wore his with a matching black waistcoat, a shirt with a starched collar, and a regular tie. Never a cravat. The cravat belongs to the morning coat and to weddings that have decided to go the whole distance; with the shorter jacket it looks like a costume that has wandered into the wrong scene. A well-chosen four-in-hand in grey, silver or a restrained stripe is the correct instrument, and it is the detail that separates the man who understands the outfit from the man who has merely hired it.
The trousers are the striped or checked formal trousers of morning dress, usually in a grey and black cashmere stripe. The waistcoat offers the most room for personality: black to match the jacket for sobriety, or dove grey and buff for something with more light in it. A white linen pocket square finishes the chest without competing with anything, which is precisely its job. If you are assembling the look from scratch, our pocket square collection and handmade tie collection cover the accessories half of the equation, even if the jacket itself will send you to a tailor or a hire shop.
Ties for Formal Daywear
The politics of a jacket
Why the Black Lounge Jacket Went Out of Fashion
Nothing was wrong with the garment. What killed it was the company it kept. Go back to the postwar years and the black jacket with striped trousers was the plumage of the establishment: Churchill in Parliament, the doctor, the barrister, the chairman of the board. It said authority, and for a while that was exactly what its wearers wanted it to say. Then the sixties arrived, and authority stopped being a compliment.
Popular culture did the rest. In the films of the period the younger men wore mod suits and mohair, while the stiff, backward-looking character, the one who was there to be gently mocked, wore the black jacket, the bowler and the umbrella. By the seventies the stroller had become shorthand for a certain kind of pompous middle manager; anyone who grew up with British sitcoms will remember Captain Peacock patrolling the shop floor in his, radiating a formality that the joke depended on. The suit, by contrast, had become sexier and more modern, with sleek Italian versions arriving to finish the job. The stroller fell for social reasons, in other words, rather than practical ones. As a system of dressing it remained exactly as sensible as it had always been. It simply became something worn by the wrong sort of character.
There is a small irony buried in this. The suit that replaced it was the more expensive habit: a new suit every time, and an orphaned jacket every time the trousers gave out. Fashion has never once consulted the accountants.
Marriage material
The Black Lounge Jacket at Weddings
Long after the offices abandoned it, the stroller kept a respectable second career at weddings, and to a degree it still has one. The hire trade loved it, and for a genuinely thoughtful reason. When a wedding party wears morning dress there is often somebody, frequently the father of the bride, who feels that a full tailcoat is simply more garment than he can carry with conviction. Put him in a black lounge jacket with the same striped trousers and waistcoat, and he matches the party, keeps his dignity, and stops tugging at his sleeves in the photographs. Grooms wore it too, and not only nervous ones.
The most famous example is also the best dressed. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, George Lazenby's James Bond marries in a short black jacket with striped trousers: morning dress, minus the tails, worn by a man produced by the same decade that was busy declaring the whole outfit obsolete. It remains one of the strongest arguments the stroller ever made for itself. If you have a wedding of your own on the horizon, our wedding collection covers the ties and pocket squares that do the quiet work in any formal outfit, whichever length of jacket you land on.
The state of formal daywear
Will the Black Lounge Jacket Make a Comeback?
Probably not, and we say that with some regret. Morning dress itself is having a quietly good decade. Formal tailors report making more morning coats than they have in years, and the dress code has loosened its collar in the best possible way: double-breasted waistcoats in unexpected colours, more adventurous trousers, wearers treating the whole thing as an invitation rather than a uniform. Morning dress has become one of the more interesting corners of tailoring precisely because people have started to enjoy it.
The short black jacket, though, shows no sign of joining the revival. Its natural habitats were the office and the ceremony, and the office has moved on so far that even the suit now has to justify its presence. What remains is a garment with an unusually good story: the missing link between the tailcoat and the suit, a jacket that dressed prime ministers, floor-walkers, Freemasons and 007, and a lesson in how clothes fall from favour for reasons that have nothing to do with the clothes. Chris still has his, hopsack, silk-taped collar and all. Some jackets earn their hanger space by being worn. Others earn it by being right.
Frequently Asked Questions
Your Questions Answered
What is a black lounge jacket or stroller?
A black lounge jacket, called a stroller in the United States and a Stresemann in continental Europe, is a suit-length jacket in black or dark Oxford grey worn as a form of morning dress. It is worn with the same striped or checked formal trousers, waistcoat, shirt and tie as a morning coat, with the long tailed coat replaced by a shorter jacket. It served for decades as formal business and ceremonial daywear, sitting between the morning coat and the ordinary suit in formality.
What do you wear with a black lounge jacket?
Wear it with morning dress accessories: striped or checked formal trousers, a waistcoat in black to match the jacket or in a lighter shade such as dove grey, a formal shirt, and a regular tie in grey, silver or a restrained stripe. A cravat is never worn with the shorter jacket; that belongs with the morning coat. A white linen pocket square finishes the outfit, and black Oxford shoes are the standard footwear.
Is a black lounge jacket the same as morning dress?
It is best understood as a variation within morning dress rather than a separate dress code. Everything about the outfit apart from the jacket, the trousers, waistcoat, shirt and tie, is identical to what you would wear with a morning coat. That said, it sits a step below the full morning coat in formality: it was never worn at Royal Ascot and is still inappropriate for the Royal Enclosure today.
Can you wear a black lounge jacket to a wedding?
Yes, and this remains its most common modern use. When a wedding party wears morning dress, a black lounge jacket with the same striped trousers and waistcoat allows a guest or family member who feels uncomfortable in a full tailcoat to match the party while wearing something closer to a familiar suit. Grooms have worn it too: George Lazenby's James Bond married in one in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Some hire shops still stock them for exactly this purpose.
What is a Stresemann suit?
The Stresemann is the continental European name for the black lounge jacket outfit, named after Gustav Stresemann, the German foreign minister of the 1920s who wore a short black jacket with striped trousers on formal occasions where a morning coat was expected. The name stuck, and in Germany it remains the standard term for this style of semi-formal daywear. The Stresemann is traditionally single-breasted, while the British and American stroller may be single or double-breasted.
Why did the black lounge jacket go out of fashion?
Largely for social rather than practical reasons. By the postwar era the black jacket with striped trousers had become a symbol of the establishment: politicians, doctors, barristers and company chairmen. When youth culture arrived in the 1960s, the sleeker modern suit became the fashionable choice and the stroller became shorthand for stuffy conservatism, a caricature reinforced by film and television. It survives today mainly in Masonic dress, ceremonial roles, traditional hotel uniforms and the occasional wedding.
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