The tailcoat shares its historical origins in clothes cut for convenient horse-riding in the Early Modern era. From the 18th century, however, tailcoats evolved into general forms of day and evening formal wear, in parallel to how the lounge suit succeeded the frock coat (19th century) and the justacorps (18th century).
Thus, in 21st-century Western dress codes for men, mainly two types of tailcoats have survived:
In colloquial language without further specification, "tailcoat" typically designates the former, that is the evening (1) dress coat for white tie.