V&A

Black Wool Tweed Double-Breasted Suit with Green Flecking

1980s · 1980s · British

Designer

Wendy Dagworthy

Production

ready-to-wear

Material

wool tweed

Culture

British

Movement

Power Dressing

Influences

menswear suiting · British tailoring tradition

A double-breasted suit in dark wool tweed with subtle green flecking throughout the black base. The jacket features wide peaked lapels, six buttons arranged in two columns, and an oversized silhouette with dropped shoulders characteristic of 1980s tailoring. The sleeves are full-length with working buttonholes at the cuffs. The matching trousers have a straight-leg cut with a relaxed fit through the hip and thigh. The tweed fabric appears to have a nubby, textured weave typical of traditional British woolens. The overall proportions emphasize breadth and volume rather than fitted tailoring, reflecting the decade's preference for architectural, power-dressing silhouettes that borrowed from menswear conventions.

jacketregular fithip length

Connected To

Black Wool Tweed Double-Breasted Suit with Green Flecking

69%

Black Leather Opera Evening Gloves

Designer·Wendy Dagworthy

SHARED10 years · cross-culture · cross-category

These pieces reveal Wendy Dagworthy's genius for making rebellion look effortless—the tweed suit's subversive green flecks scattered through traditional British suiting like punk confetti, while those sleek opera gloves stretch the very idea of evening wear into something almost predatory. Both pieces weaponize classic British luxury codes, the suit turning Savile Row's grammar inside out and the gloves transforming ladylike propriety into something that could slice through pretension.

Echoes Across Time

2020s → 1980s · 40yr62%

SHARED

The blazer dress borrows the 1980s suit's power-dressing DNA but strips away the formality—where the original double-breasted jacket demanded matching trousers and rigid structure, this descendant swallows the wearer in deliberate oversizing and stands alone as a dress.

Influences·menswear suiting

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Navy Blue Wool Suiting Fabric

60%

Black Wool Tweed Double-Breasted Suit with Green Flecking

Movement·Power DressingTechnique·machine-weaving

LINEAGEsame era · cross-category→ directed

Lineage: “menswear suiting”

Here's the bloodline of 1980s power dressing laid bare: the navy suiting fabric shows the clean, uncompromising weave that became armor for women storming the boardroom, while the black tweed suit with its scattered green flecks represents that same masculine authority softened just enough to remain unmistakably feminine.

Text63%

Image65%

Entity29%