The Great Male Renunciation (French: Grande Renonciation masculine) is the historical phenomenon at the end of the 18th century in which wealthy men of the Western world stopped using bright colours, elaborate shapes and variety in their dress, which were left to women's clothing. Instead, men concentrated on minute differences of cut, and the quality of the plain cloth.[1]
Coined by British psychologist John Flügel in 1930, it is considered a major turning point in the history of clothing in which the men relinquished their claim to adornment and beauty.[2] Flügel asserted that men "abandoned their claim to be considered beautiful" and "henceforth aimed at being only useful".[3] The Great Renunciation encouraged the establishment of the suit's monopoly on male dress codes at the beginning of the 19th century.