It is easy to mock the idea of Cameron standing up for the toiling masses while the pockets of his Old Etonian tailcoat bulge with hedge-funded millions.
Yet last week a poll by MORI found that 74% thought Mr Cameron's formative years in a tailcoat and a starched collar would not count against him.
And, having found it, to persuade it to switch from beer to costlier Scotch.Through the crowd comes an African dressed as "Johnnie Walker" in red tailcoat and bouffant cravat.
An inmate dressed in a top hat and tailcoat drove a horse-drawn hearse, also inmate-built, to the cemetery, where a half-dozen inmate pallbearers carried him to his grave.
The formal black tailcoat was now reserved for evening attire.
The tailcoat was reserved for weddings and dances, the lounge suit became the accepted city wear, and sports jackets and gray flannel pants were popular for casual attire.
Groucho was the master of wit and verbal timing, and he delivered wisecracks and non sequiturs at a dizzying, relentless pace; his visual trademarks included greasepainted eyebrows and mustache, glasses, tailcoat, and ever-present cigar.
Men, however, continued to wear a black frock coat with gray striped trousers for formal day wear and a black tailcoat and trousers with a white waistcoat for evening wear if ladies were present.
The tailcoat, waisted and padded on the chest, was de rigueur, accompanied by a waistcoat and close-fitting trousers called pantaloons, which were first buckled at the ankle and later, after 1820, strapped under the instep.
Among other examples he invoked men's formal wear, specifically the styling of the tailcoat, as an example in which vestiges of a past item in this case the greatcoat, with its waist-length front and split tail for ease in riding horses—had survived into the present.
The three-piece lounge suit, with a jacket instead of a tailcoat, was introduced in the 1850s for informal occasions.
