LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD
Around the time that Stephen George Holland and Frederick Sherry opened a fabric merchants at 10 Old Bond Street in 1836, specialising in woollen and silk cloths, men’s coats featured long tails at the back and were cut much higher at the front. Square-cut waistcoats were de rigueur, as were gigot sleeves and, among more self-conscious early Victorian flâneurs, boned corsets. It was around the time that breeches were supplanted by long trousers.
By the time the company’s subsequent major milestones came to pass — its move, in 1886, to Golden Square, then the fulcrum of London’s wool trade, followed by its establishment of a presence in New York in 1900 — top hats and overcoats were essential
