Mystery Freemason Tailcoat???

Hello there, so in advance I apologize for how long this is going to be, but I wanted to include all the details. This tailcoat caught my eye at the charity shop, and it turned out it came as a full set with a waistcoat and trousers. There are no labels except for one in the coat's back and one in the inner pocket of the waistcoat. Dating it has been a confounding endeavour, but so far I do believe that I'm dealing with pre-WWII? at least for some of the set, given the wear, materials and style. I'll split this into all three elements as there's a number of factors for each of them.

Tailcoat:
The woven label in the lining reads 'Ribe-Christensen Hobro', I've been unable to locate exactly where in Hobro or which Ribe-Christensen this is, but I've found that there is one family named that who have lived there since the mid-late 1800s, possibly tailors? The youngest sons were born in 1911 and 1915 respectively. The coat is certainly tailor-made, with a tear in the lining revealing marks from the fitting. The closings in places such as the lining, lapels and armholes are all hand sewn. Lining seems to be silk? I'm so bad at recognizing fabric, but it feels soft and fairly heavy with a rich lustre. What stands out to me right now is the style of lapels and the shoulder construction. The lapels are fairly skinny, especially when compared to my own 1920s tailcoat, and made from shiny un-textured silk, while the body of the tailcoat itself is a little proportionally longer. The shoulders have some kind of padding, but only in the top of the sleeve, not before the sleeve seam as conventional shoulder pads. Buttons seem to be plastic?

Spoiler: Tailcoat Details

Waistcoat:
This was a total mystery to me at first, as I thought black waistcoats went out of fashion after WWI and this felt younger to me. Well, turns out that freemasons, at least in scandinavia, wear black waistcoats when they do formals, as seen with this repurposed freemason set(which also happens to have the same sort of trouser stripe as on my set of trousers). This is probably also tailor-made, given the lack of adjustment on the back. The lining hand-stitched in places and is all undyed cotton, which is interesting as that is something I associate with pre-WWII waistcoats in my experience, but does not seem as worn as it does on my other waistcoats, it also has no stains, but does have a little interior pocket. It seems to be made of the same wool as the tailcoat. There is a stampted label in the interior pocket but I have no idea what it represents, it feels the same fabric/paper as the union label in my american tux.

Spoiler: Waistcoat Details

Trousers:
The trousers I keep flipping back and forth on whether I think they came with the rest or not. The fabric seems sliiiiightly different at a closeup? but it's also black wool, so it's extremely hard to tell. It has a button fly, one front pleat and buttons for braces installed. I believe it may have been adjusted or slightly altered, as the inside has seams with serging on them, but this serging stops before it reaches the end of the seam, indicating it might have been done after the trousers were complete. They also have the little zig-zag threading to prevent fraying on all seams, something I've scoured the forums to get more of an idea of the dating of, but as far as I can tell there seems to be no real consensus? As mentioned above, the side stripe on these trousers are identical to the one on another pair of freemasons' trousers from Denmark.

Spoiler: Trouser Details

Sorry for the massive information dump! I'm just a little bit confounded at these, and I would love to get some more input on their possible history.

 

Update!!!! I've been digging further and I found a mention of Ribe-Christensen in a book from 1917 about the city of Hobro! Turns out, it's the name of a store and the man who ran it, selling textiles and textile goods, here's a photo

Surely the tailcoat cannot be THAT old though?

ETA: M. Ribe-Christensen as seen on the sign, has been identified as Marius Ribe-Christensen, who, according to another source, operated this shop for 30 years, therefore the tailcoat can at its youngest be from 1947, that's pretty cool

 

Excellent detailed information -- do you have any pics?

 

There should be pics in the spoiler tags in the first post(the boxes which say 'spoiler: tailcoat details' &etc), they're all detail pictures though as I figured a tails set is a tails set when it comes to the overall shape generally

 

I see them now after clicking the boxes -- sorry about that.

Are there buttons on the back of the sleeves and are they plastic as well? I'm used to seeing silk covered buttons for this period, but I am in no way an expert. Bumping this for you and hoping that some of the more knowledgeable folks will take a look.

 

Thanks for sharing! great info

 

Here's the sleeve-buttons in a spoilertag. They also seem plastic, but chipped and worn in places, and the one that's broken doesn't have an even colouring all the way through, which is probably normal for plastic?? I thought it was neat, anyway haha

Spoiler: Sleeve buttons

Thank you! The sleuthing is honestly one of my favourite things about collecting vintage, nothing beats trawling through old archive to build up the history of a garment.

I've been hesitant to lean towards the 40s myself, due to the occupation of denmark 1940-45 which not only levied heavy rationing/restrictions on buying fabrics and clothes, but also had active discrimination against freemasons(with the danish SS taking over their head building in Copenhagen), something that in my mind would make it a little weird that a brand new freemason set could be bought in a local shop? Though if the pieces don't all come from the same origin, that could explain it. Or it having been produced after the war, but before the store closed, though since the 1917 source mentions it having been around 'for a few years,' it seems likely it closed just as or before the war was over. (That said, I have found contact information on the store-owner's grandson and I'm texting him to ask if he has the exact years of operation, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask!)

Your note about the belt on waistcoats is really interesting to me, as I only have one other waistcoat without one in my collection, and that's a part of a tailor-made three-piece from 1962, hence my assumption that it was associated with the same method of production. So it's actually more of an age thing? with younger waistcoats being less likely to have the adjustable belt?

Thank you so much for the help !