Over the final decades of the eighteenth century, aesthetics evolved from the frothily ornate Rococo style into comparatively pared-down Neoclassicism influenced by ancient Greek and Roman art and architecture. The materials, shape and cut all point to this waistcoat being made and worn sometime between 1790, when this transformation roughly began in earnest, and 1810, the height of the Neoclassical period.

The simple colour-scheme and, particularly, the white cotton were emblematic features of the neoclassical, directly inspired by popular contemporary perceptions of Greco-Roman civilization. Ancient Greek sculpture, in particular, was originally highly coloured, but had long since lost most of its paint to reveal the white marble underneath, which became strongly associated with classical civilization.

The waistcoat is nearly straight and angular, which is more typical of the early nineteenth century, rather than being shaped through the chest and with a cutaway bottom as was more typical during the Rococo period. The length is somewhere in between the two periods being shorter than the thigh-length waistcoats of much of the eighteenth century but longer than the waist-length ones of the early nineteenth century. The standing collar is also a more neoclassical feature appearing first in the 1790s and continuing into the 1820s.