A fitted men’s jacket worn from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century—the foundational garment of Western tailored clothing, from which the modern suit jacket, the blazer, and the waistcoat all descend.
The doublet was a close-fitting jacket worn over the shirt and under the outer garment. It was padded, stiffened, and structured—the first garment in Western men’s fashion to be fitted to the torso through tailoring rather than lacing or wrapping. The doublet’s construction—its boning, its quilting, its precise cutting at shoulder and waist—established the principles of tailoring that remain in use today.
The doublet evolved through the centuries, its shape changing to reflect each era’s masculine ideal. In the sixteenth century, it was padded into a peascod belly, a protruding curve at the waist that suggested virility. In the seventeenth, it was shortened and stiffened into the pourpoint, emphasizing the shoulder over the torso. In the eighteenth, it collapsed into the waistcoat, disappearing as an independent garment.
The doublet matters to fashion history because it established the principle that men’s clothing could be architectural. Before the doublet, men’s garments were draped or wrapped. After the doublet, they were built. Every tailored jacket worn today—every blazer, every suit coat, every tuxedo—is a descendant of the doublet’s original engineering.
