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A fashionable executive lift

Suspenders hold up a lot of history. First worn by French aristocrats in the court of Louis XVI, they were considered a mark of the well-dressed American man from colonial times to the early 20th century. As late as 1910 it was difficult to buy a pair of trousers with belt loops. But when World War I doughboys came marching home, they wore coarse yarn belts, and by the late 1920s the popularity of suspenders began to wane.

Now a budding revival of suspenders is under way. Businessmen, lawyers, brokers and investment bankers are returning to the old way...