Ensemble

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An early eighteenth-century waistcoat was little more than a tube and did not shape the waist other than to generate a basic cylinder for the torso. The 1950s-60s man's sack suit is a more recent example of such waist obliteration.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art