Surviving photographs of Jewish Viennese men during the fin-de-siecle and interwar periods – both the renowned cultural luminaries and their many anonymous coreligionists – all share a striking sartorial detail: the tailored suit. Yet, until now, the adoption of the tailored suit and its function in the formation of modern Jewish identities remains under-researched. 
 
Jews in Suits uses a rich range of written and visual sources, including literary fiction and satire, ‘ego-documents’, photography, trade catalogues, invoices, and department store culture, to propose a new narrative of men, fashion, and their Jewish identities. It reveals that dressing in a modern manner was not simply a matter of assimilation, but rather a way of developing new models of Jewish subjectivity beyond the externally prescribed notion of ‘the Jew’. Drawing upon fashionable dress, folk costume, religious dress, avant-garde, oppositional dress, typologies which are often considered separate from one another, it proposes a new way of reading men and clothing cultures within an iconic cultural milieu, offering insights into the relationship of clothing and grooming to the understanding of the self. 

Jonathan C. Kaplan-Wajsel­baum is an hon­orary adjunct fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Technolo­gy Syd­ney and manager of research and senior educator at the Sydney Jewish Museum.

He holds a PhD in dress and design his­to­ry from the Imag­in­ing Fash­ion Futures Research lab at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy Syd­ney, and has pub­lished on the inter­sec­tions between dress, accul­tur­a­tion, and Jew­ish identity. 

Nadine J. Cohen is a Sydney-based writer with bylines in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, SMH/Age, ABC, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. Her debut novel, Everyone and Everything, was released to critical acclaim in 2023 and she co-hosts the multi-award-winning Grave Matters podcast on SBS. Nadine is also a passionate independent advocate for refugees affected by Australia’s offshore detention program.