OH HEY MY AREA OF EXPERTISE!
So here are a couple of helpful links, first off.
This is a slideshow of British fashion from the 11th century through the 1960's. It covers both men and women's fashion. It's pretty basic, good jumping off point.
Another link to British fashion. This one covers about the same time periods. Again, male and female fashions.
This one deals with late Victorian dress for men specifically:
Late Victorian Clothing for Men at Historical Emporium
Now, MOVING ON TO NITTY-GRITTY now we've gotten the basics out of the way. (This is going to be super dumbed down to be accessible so uh yeah just ignore that if you know costuming okay)
There are basic kinds of clothing that everyone is familiar with. You've got your shirt, your coat, your pants/trousers, your socks, your underwear, your shoes--and for women, your skirt and your dress. (We're just going to shelve the ladies' stuff because you're more interested in dudes.)
So SHIRTS.
Shirts used to be tunics. A tunic is easily identifiable because it is two pieces sewn together. It came about once people stopped just wearing drapings of cloth. These used to be worn as outerwear as well as underwear and often super casually. Funnily enough, now a tunic is associated with uniforms and formality.
When they started to stitch a little more complex things, you got a SHIRT. Shirts are both under and over garments, but prior to very recently if you wore an exposed shirt you were either poor as mud or being vulgar. Shirts are basically just called shirts, though there are more specific names out there for the type. A shirt without sleeves is called a
singlet. In the 17th to 19th centuries, your shirt might have been decorated with a
jabot.
Next, COATS.
Coats are outerwear that fastens up the front. The old-school Renaissance/medieval spelling is cote. There are all kinds of coats, but some of the most well-known would include the frock coat (big knee-length coat, best known for its Victorian incarnation), the tailcoat (very fancy and formal, has long tails at the back while the front of the coat only reaches the waist and was originally devised so people could properly ride horses), and the
justaucorps which is basically awesome. There's also dusters (long and loose). Google all of these, they're tight.
Jackets are short coats. Before the 17th century you had a doublet, which was snug and fit under armor and was super fashionable. This ended up getting replaced with a waistcoat which is basically a vest and was worn under a coat. Later on you had a smoking jacket which was worn while, you know,
smoking and was kinda like what you and I would call a bathrobe (the more period term is dressing gown), except worn over clothing.
Robes in general are coats that are worn for some kind of ceremonial purpose, be it to indicate royalty, academic prowess, or some sort of official position. They're loose-fitting and flowy.
PANTS/TROUSERS.
Trousers are actually super old, despite the whole deal with tights. We'll just gloss over the braccae and all the other oldass terms because fuck knows you're not gonna write those. We'll skip right to braies, a medieval form of shorts. They were baggy and varied in length. These turned into breeches, which were worn over a kind of under-trouser called drawers. Drawers were the precursor to what we would call tights but were called hose at the time.
This was when pantaloons came along. Google that for a good time.
Breeches became trousers and eventually took back the height of fashion when pantaloons began to fail like the old-school hammerpants that they were. Jeans are denim trousers and older than you think too.
SOCKS
Socks have pretty much always been socks. They used to be held up with garters before the invention of elastic. Length of socks is proportionate to length of trousers at the time. Long socks are often called stockings.
Fun fact, a design on the side of a sock is called a clock. This is because these vertical designs end up looking like clock hands apparently???
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/53/2f/85/532f854dec722a87b3a4dde3229238a6.jpg
UNDERWEAR
So we covered a little of this between shirts, trousers, and socks because let's face it this is kind of a broad one. The oldest form of underwear in the world is the loincloth. You probably know what that is. Braies replaced this. Later a codpiece was added. The codpiece was basically a primitive fly, and later it got padded thanks to that douchebag Henry VIII which is how we ended up with shit like
this.
Up top, guys wore a shift/chemise. This was tucked into the braies. It went under everything else.
Corsets got added for both men and women later on.
Union suits were popular in the 19th century. This was a kind of onesie kind of like long johns but one single piece. Jockstraps also came along late 19th century to ease with bike riding!
Boxers came along in early forms around the early 1900's, thank god.
SHOES
There's too fucking much to even go into with shoes, oh my god. Just go with shoes and boots. That's pretty basic.
ACCESSORIES
There are a lot of fucking terms for neckties. Seriously just read
this shit. There are also a lot of kinds of hats.
Enjoy. Once again I can't really go into too much detail because where do I even start.
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT, a fucking I-don't-care basic primer to mens' fashion terms! 8D
