The owner of this garment is unknown and we do not know how it came to be in New Zealand. Perhaps it was brought by an Australian who came here or the owner travelled to Sydney and purchased it there. We can see from the quality of the fabric, the lavish decoration with cornelli work and the embellishment with decorative buttons that it would have been an expensive suit. We imagine that the owner was interested in being fashionable. Despite the war, ‘fashion’ was still strong and people who had the means and the interest would have kept up to date. Read more about wearing the colour black in the New Zealand Fashion Museum publication Black: The history of black in fashion, society and culture in New Zealand.