Coat, lounge suit (suit)

Wool suit, c. 1939. Tailored by Needham & Son, Coram Street, Southampton Row for Max Beerbohm.

Sir Henry Maximilian 'Max' Beerbohm (1872-1954, knighted 1939) was a writer, theatre critic and caricaturist, the son of a German Lithuanian man and an English woman. He portrayed contemporaries like Whistler, Gladstone, Disraeli and Queen Victoria. Beerbohm was a life-long dandy who admired 'Beau' Brummel's 'utter simplicity'. This double-breasted suit is mounted with a cotton shirt and silk tie which also belonged to Beerbohm. The boxy jacket in brown wool with cream dots has no back vents. It has wide, shaped revers, both with a buttonhole. The body is lined with brown silk fabric, the sleeves are lined in a cream cotton with fine coloured stripes. The buttons are made of Bakelite.

The Polish writer and journalist, Camille Honig, who met Beerbohm in 1944, was impressed by his appearance. 'He looks as elegant and neat as one of his exquisitely turned-out phrases. He wore a well-cut, double-breasted light grey suit, black socks, black shoes well polished, blue striped shirt (I think), a dark tie with an old-world pearl pin in it.'

At Oxford, Beerbohm was friends with Oscar Wilde, and friends and enemies speculated for years about his sexuality. However, he lived happily in Italy for 41 years with his wife, the American actress Florence Kahn.