Suspenders: History and Fixing My Dad’s

It’s shock­ing to think that some­thing which seems so basic as sus­penders, could be traced back to a designer/inventor!

Sus­penders were first invent­ed by Albert Thurston in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry in Hay­mar­ket, Lon­don. Because the sus­penders  allowed men to wear high-rise dress pants while remain­ing hid­den under a jack­et (almost like an under­gar­ment piece),  they  grew in pop­u­lar­i­ty among the upper­class and roy­als and even­tu­al­ly grew into a house hold name.

(Hmmm…suspenders remind me of SPANX for women…hidden and allow the mass­es to wear fash­ions they would oth­er­wise like­ly wear with­out the acces­so­ry piece! haha)

After World War I, men’s fash­ions changed and most men swapped out sus­penders with belts. How­ev­er, sus­penders are gain­ing a come­back! In fact, Albert Thurston’s shop con­tin­ues to be one of the best shops for high qual­i­ty sus­penders! Read more about the com­pa­ny and his­to­ry of sus­penders here.

As you know from recent posts, my sis­ter had a wed­ding a few weeks ago. I orig­i­nal­ly hoped to make my dad’s attire, but I did NOT have any extra time! 🙁 (This is espe­cial­ly dis­ap­point­ing since I ulti­mate­ly want to focus on menswear!) Rather instead of sewing his out­fit, I helped my dad pick out his acces­sories and suit for the wedding.

At first, I was very sur­prised by the lack of qual­i­ty in the depart­ment and menswear stores! We searched through stores for qual­i­ty ties, sus­penders, and pock­et squares and did­n’t find any­thing worth buy­ing & wear­ing! Yes my dad is a big man- but even the acces­sories for an aver­age man were WEAK in design and qual­i­ty! So due to lack of time to con­tin­ue shop­ping around, my dad stuck to using acces­sories he already held in his closet.

One of his acces­sories which he owned were “dam­aged” leather suspenders.

When I urged my dad NOT to buy the sus­penders at the store (because they looked cheap and tacky), he told me that he had no choice because (not includ­ing his ‘clip-on’ sus­penders) his lighter sus­penders he were ripped!

So I told my dad to show me these ripped sus­penders- per­haps I could fix them!

YEP! I told my dad I could repair his sus­penders! I did­n’t have a lot of time and lacked the right cut­ting tools, so I told him I would repair them as best I could! (Let me remind you I was doing this while I was jug­gling the last minute silk wed­ding dress top for my sis­er!)

I had some brown leather (from my purs­es) that matched close­ly to the brown embossed leather suspenders.

I traced the sus­penders with an awl.

I traced 2 pieces and sewed them togeth­er (for strength).

Then, I sim­ply used my cut­ter and punch to make the but­ton hole.

My repair worked and I was able to some­what cre­ate some­thing for my dad on my sis­ter’s wed­ding day too!

BIG POSTS COMING UP: HANDBAG LAUNCH AND LAST WEDDING POST!