The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing.
$4000 is several times what I spend on clothes in a year. It's several times what I spend on clothes in several years. There's a far less expensive option that's highly satisficing. Suits, once an inexpensive, practical, standardized alternative to more ornate and expensive clothing, are now the expensive, frequently impractical attire. The lead time to purchase is too long. And a far lower grade of tailoring is more than sufficient for virtually any occasion. That's basic facts.
There are exceptions -- people for whom the expense is neither extravagent nor unneccessary. It's a pretty small crowd, well within the top 1%, and probably more like the top 0.01%. Then divide by two, because, well, very few women wear suits (though women's fashion is its own discussion).
As TFA notes, bespoke tailoring doesn't scale. And it strongly suggests a rather fragile relationship between the garment and the wearer -- I can change in multiple of 25 separate measurements within a few months to a years time -- does this render a suit poor-fitting?
The made-to-measure alternative exists, and for many or most, it's a more-than-acceptable alternative for either formal or casual clothing. With correctly chosen measuring points, and if necessary, some additional tailoring, garments can be made to fit quite well. Cloth is pretty fungible. Sticking to conservative fashions, styles, and cuts means you'll have something that will wear well for years. And in a world in which off-the-rack sizing is increasingly problematic (aggressively styled cuts with little sizing leeway result in more frustrated customers), it's increasingly an option. There are a few vendors in the space, though I feel it's still waiting for its true visionary.
If you get out of your tech-bubble, you'll notice this as very far from the truth.
Suits are the work dress in consulting, financial services, pretty much anything where you're clients demand respect and are not in IT (IT and personal visual aestethics have an inverse relationship, in any big company you can easily tell who is in IT).
Try to attend a management meeting in Europe, China, Japan without a suit.
Within the suit world people from the US are also highly visible as the art of fashion seems to have been lost. While the rest of the world went with tighter forms, US men still wear balloon shaped trousers, as if the 80s never stopped. And the number one tell are the shoes. Italians shape the shoe world, pointy and long have been the way to go for some time now - but US men go in with big black round things, often not even polished properly. This goes up to CEO level.
There are certain elements of a push-back right now in the US as well, the first one being the success of the tv-series Mad Med which is a big advertisement for fashion and representative clothing. The second being a resurgence of elegant, masculine fashion - see blogs like the Sartorialist for a glimpse into that: http://www.thesartorialist.com/
A well-fitted suit does not signal money, it signals TASTE. Which is very hard to talk about in tech circles. Like looking at a well set up VIM instance, it tells you about the owner's habits.
> Try to attend a management meeting in Europe, China, Japan without a suit.
You don't even have to go as far as management meeting. In Japan, if you have any sort of white-collar job (with few exceptions in tech companies and research departments), you wear a suit.
Not sure Japan is the best example - suits there, as worn by the salarymen you're talking about, are hardly treated as fashion - they're worn with all the pride and enthusiasm of any other uniform, i.e. not much. Morning on the yamanote-sen is a sea of miserable-looking ill-fitting suits, all seemingly in the same two shades ("boring blue" and "grim grey"), lifeless translucent e-z-care shirts and $5 ties. I haven't had too much cause to wear suits in Japan but when I did a $1500 Hugo Boss and a decent shirt made me feel like frigging James Bond.
Not to say I didn't see nice suits, I saw plenty, just saying that your average sarariman sure isn't buying $4000 bespoke suits and frankly I would doubt $400.
The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing.
Why do you think the suit is dead?
I wear a suit (not always, but often enough to have an opinion).
I've never bought an expensive suit, but I nor do I buy cheap suits. I guess I generally spend around $500.
I work with people who spend $2000 on suits though. These aren't bespoke, but are from nice fabrics and cut very well (eg, Hugo Boss etc). I'm no suit expert, but I can tell the difference.
I can't say I've seen any particular decrease in suit wearing over the past 15 years I've been working, although ties are less common that they used to be.
In my experience location and field of work makes a bigger difference to suit wearing than anything else.
Don't know about other places, but at least in NoCal high status people don't wear suits. Since the only function of a suit is status signaling, it seems just a matter of time until everyone else catches up and suits will be replaced by bike jerseys or whatever.
I know it may not seem that way sometimes, but NoCal is not the entire world - nor does the entire world take their cultural cues from NoCal.
The suit is very much alive in NY, in London, the entire legal world, and in many other places. That's just during the day.
For formal events / outings it is SF that is the extreme outlier. In the rest of the country if you are going to a fancy restaurant, a wedding, an awards dinner or the like you wear a suit. The original rational for the suit actually still holds for these occasions - it removes the need to constantly chase the latest fashions, as many woman and all hipsters must.
Suits change according to fashion too. Most of us just don't notice and walk around happily oblivious to the hipsters/fashionistas judging us and sniggering between themselves.
When I bought my wedding suit, my fiancee dragged me to multiple shops and eventually had a lengthy discussion with a Saville Row tailor over whether to have one button or three buttons (two? I have no idea), as she believed one button suits would be coming back into fashion on the higher end, but most of the brands did not offer one button suits at the time. She was right. She had similar opinions about the cut...
I, for one, wear suits simply because I enjoy them. I like how they look. More and more, as I get older, oddly. In my 20s you would have had to force me into one.
It's definitely true that there is status signaling involved, whether it's conscious or not, although I would hesitate to say that it's the suit's only purpose (and in my case, that's a side effect, not the purpose). You could make that argument about any clothing if you go that far.
But...I've definitely noticed being treated subtly better when I dress for occasions. Go to a nice restaurant dressed for an occasion, and you'll tend be treated like it's an occasion (obviously your milage may vary - act like a jerk and you'll be treated like one, no matter what you're wearing).
"Extreme" outlier may be going a bit far. I live in the Southwest (NM). I found myself at a formal, Conservative Jewish funeral a couple weeks ago and half of us were wearing jeans. I was slightly overdressed just in slacks and a nice button-up. One out of the last four job candidates that's interviewed here came in anything fancier than that. I've been to four or five weddings out here, and never seen a shortage of bluejeans; seems like only the people in the wedding are expected to dress up out here. The only people I see consistently dressing in suits are lawyers, but they can waltz into court wearing cowboy hats and bolo ties with their suits without arousing a weird look.
We all have different experiences I guess, but the further West you go, the less formal the attire, and California isn't really as "extreme" as you may think.
Maybe it's just me, but wearing jeans to a wedding or funeral and not wearing a jacket and tie to a interview immediately signal disrespect and that the guest/candidate is too lazy to put in the requisite effort.
It might. But out here in the Southwest, we don't dress like Saudis even though their garb is better suited to the climate. For a lot less than $4000 New Englanders could wear mountaineering suits and that would probably retain heat and repel the elements better than a suit, but I doubt that one's coming around either.
Ultimately it's just a cultural difference, and searching for rationality behind it isn't going to bear fruit.
Norcal is a nice place to live, but it is not a fashion mecca.
In Southern California though the suit is totally impractical, unless you like to be drenched is sweat. Most of the world is the same at < 35 degrees latitude.
I'd go so far to say the suit is a minor cause of global warming ... all those high rises with no windows running AC all day. Mostly unnecessary.
Don't know about other places, but at least in NoCal high status people don't wear suits.
There seems to be a kind of inverse snobbery about smart dress at the moment, as if the 50-year-old CEOs of huge tech firms think that by taking off their tie we're going to think they're one of us, or the 25-year-old founder of a trendy start-up is going to convince us of their business savvy by wearing a T-shirt and trainers while giving a presentation.
Since the only function of a suit is status signaling
Really? I happen to think that smart dress looks better on me than casual anyway, but even without that, suits are fairly practical garments. A well-made suit is comfortable to wear all day. Suits have an easily removable jacket if you're hot, yet provide useful shelter for the elements if it's cold/wet outside. They have plenty of handy pockets for pens, phones, etc.
>>Really? I happen to think that smart dress looks better on me than casual anyway,
Your argument appears wrong because you assume the definition of a 'smart dress' involves wearing a suit.
The definition of 'smart dressing' has been changing rapidly. The very fact that demands for suits is less, shows the trend of clothing around the world.
Back during the days of slavery/aristocracy- costly clothing was automatically a status signal. What you are seeing currently are just echoes of that culture.
I would consider it stupid to spend so much on costly clothing. I am hiring people to write program, not for modeling.
NoCal is bizarro world for people living pretty much anywhere else. It is also tiny. High status people who are high enough status to get recognized regularly don't need status symbols to signal their status.
But that breaks apart in bigger environments, and out comes the suits.
Status signalling via wearable fashion is alive and well. There are hipsters living in my neighbourhood who spend well over $1k (average decent suit cost) on their outfits.
If anything, I suspect people on average are spending more on clothes around here.
This article doesn't read like a subtle "the suit is back!" pitch to me. It's a pretty interesting look at the economics of a couple of different ways of making better-fitting suits.
I agree that the interesting changes will come out of the made-to-measure world. Considering the difference in comfort (not to mention look!) that properly-fitting clothing provides, I'd be extremely interested in getting a nice made-to-measure suit if I had the sort of job or social calendar that would give me opportunities to wear it... and while I don't expect to ever be in the sort of job or circles that would require a suit regularly, I definitely look forward to an economical, quick(ish) way of getting a nice-fitting suit. Last time I bought a suit I had to wait over a month for alterations to be done at the department store anyway, so if someone can come up with a way of reducing made-to-measure turnaround to a month...
And then let me gets khakis and less-formal shirts made that way too... I buy a lot more of those than suits.
The reason you see made-to-measure more so with suits as opposed to more casual wear is because suits are highly structured garments. They have to fit correctly in a lot of different places, whereas knitwear like t-shirts and polos stretch and the same size can accomodate a wider variety of body types. There are lots of places that will do MTM casual button ups.
I have several MTM shirts and suits, and honestly I don't think it's really worth it. For a couple reasons, I'm much happier these days finding a brand that fits me off the rack and having it altered if necessary.
1. The grand promise of MTM is the perfect fit, but your first one or two attempts are almost certainly going to leave you with a garment that doesn't fit. At best, this requires more fittings, trips to the tailor, and time. At worst, you're stuck paying for a garment that you will never wear and cannot return.
2. MTM will always be more expensive. For example, Indochino suits are pretty cheap ($400), but for the same level of construction and fabric you're looking at a a $200 suit from Men's Warehouse. J. Crew sells $130 Thomas Mason shirts, and to get the same shirt MTM from my Hong Kong tailor costs me $200.
Yes, the article is, if you'll pardon the term, a cut above the usual "suit is back" PR hack job.
It doesn't make the suit any less dead.
And as much as I'm fashion averse, I've also found myself increasingly frustrated by the state of the fashion industry and lack of reasonable alternatives to actually take a mild interest in the article.
You don't wear a bespoke suit to fit the minimal requirements for a given occasion, you do it because of the way it makes you feel - there is nothing quite like wearing an item of clothing that is perfect in every possible way. It's really not comparable to a made-to-measure which tends to follow one of a set of patterns, none of which might be perfect for you.
If I wore suits I would have a bespoke one made, but as it is, bespoke women's clothing is more complicated financially - you simply wouldn't wear the same dress as often as you would the same suit, probably by an order of magnitude.
Lastly. Men in suits. Hot. Men in bespoke suits. Blisteringly so.
Women tend to be very underserviced compared to men in any case. Or at least that used to be so -- men have, for some inexplicable reason, come to accept a rather low level of basic service when buying clothing these days. Perhaps it is because casual attire is much more casual than it once was; dungarees were something one might have worn for rough or dirty work at one time.
I grew up in suits, or at least in jackets and ties. I've worn bespoke when I could afford it, including (then) casual tweeds. But in my youth, I was a more-or-less off the rack kind of guy. "Off the rack", in those days, meant that somebody would spend the better part of an hour with a marking chalk playing with the lay of the collar, the rotation of the shouders, the vent(s) and armholes (to the extent possible), and so on -- and that's in addition to the expected tweaks to the sleeve length, moving cuff buttons, hemming and cuffing trousers, altering the waist and stride to fit, and so on. That was part of the price of a $400 suit in the '80s, even at a chain men's wear store. Extra-cost alterations were things that went right down to the structure of the garment.
I was absolutely shocked to see what my wife had to put up with. Not only were the prices way out of line (at the same price level, things like seam finishing and so on are nowhere near as well-attended-to in women's wear as in men's wear, even if the garments themselves are comparable -- say something like a blazer). Then everything was extra, including the stuff that absolutely has to happen, like hemming a skirt or a pair of slacks. Ridiculous. You ought to throw yourselves a little revolution.
No offense, but just about everything in your comment is wrong. Your argument that suits are dead is way off the mark. Maybe in San Francisco it's not expected to wear a suit to a job interview or to meet with clients, but in every job I've ever worked at the men were expected to wear a suit and tie more often than not.
Your 1% comment doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. Are you saying that only households making over $340k a year[1] would spend that much on a suit? My first job out of college was for $28k a year in a city. I had to spend much of that first year buying $600-800 suits because that's what I was expected to wear. I have friends that make what I make now and gladly drop twice what I would on a suit. It doesn't have anything to do with income.
I believe this was mentioned elsewhere, but a $4,000 suit isn't mainly about income or wealth, it's about taste. Pick up any $4,000 suit from a custom clothier and hang it up next to a $350 suit from Men's Wearhouse. You will absolutely be able to tell the difference from the other side of the room.
In Vancouver it's hard enough to find french cuffs on shirts, or even a super 150.
No one wears suits anymore and those who do just want cheap garbage, that's pretty much the point of the article.
The bespoke suit is the new Mac Pro, cheap to those who value it and overpriced to those who have no use for it, hence virtually no bottom line. (Mac Pros aren't a $24B business, but to those who desire them there is no substitute).
Get your t-shirts tailored and you'll start to see the value tailors can provide if you're the sort of person willing to spend money to look better.
It may only be the top 0.01% but there are also only really a handful of established tailors who offer full bespoke. I really doubt there are more than 100, maybe 200 tops. They serve all the oil money playboys, the Chinese new wealth, the business magnates, all of the world's wealthiest customers. Often these customers purchase suits in large quantities too (The measuring process gets significantly less intensive each time you purchase a new suit) and have the ability to fly the tailors to their homes. I think a lot of people here underestimate the sheer quantities of suits these 0.01% purchase. The average person here may have two or three suits, they may have two or three closets of suits.
If anything, bespoke clothing is doing better than it has in almost a century. China's incredible boom has led to a whole new crop of millionaires with an insatiable desire for western luxury goods. Suits, purses, jewelry, wristwatches, everything. LVMH's spectacular profits are a good proof of this.
People have been saying "the suit is dead" for a number of years now. Yeah, maybe it is, maybe we will never go back to Mad Men days of suits in the office and dinner jackets at night, maybe the suit as a consumer good is on its last legs. But the bespoke suit, the suit as a piece of craftsmanship is doing better than ever.
The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing.
$4000 is several times what I spend on clothes in a year. It's several times what I spend on clothes in several years. There's a far less expensive option that's highly satisficing. Suits, once an inexpensive, practical, standardized alternative to more ornate and expensive clothing, are now the expensive, frequently impractical attire. The lead time to purchase is too long. And a far lower grade of tailoring is more than sufficient for virtually any occasion. That's basic facts.
There are exceptions -- people for whom the expense is neither extravagent nor unneccessary. It's a pretty small crowd, well within the top 1%, and probably more like the top 0.01%. Then divide by two, because, well, very few women wear suits (though women's fashion is its own discussion).
As TFA notes, bespoke tailoring doesn't scale. And it strongly suggests a rather fragile relationship between the garment and the wearer -- I can change in multiple of 25 separate measurements within a few months to a years time -- does this render a suit poor-fitting?
The made-to-measure alternative exists, and for many or most, it's a more-than-acceptable alternative for either formal or casual clothing. With correctly chosen measuring points, and if necessary, some additional tailoring, garments can be made to fit quite well. Cloth is pretty fungible. Sticking to conservative fashions, styles, and cuts means you'll have something that will wear well for years. And in a world in which off-the-rack sizing is increasingly problematic (aggressively styled cuts with little sizing leeway result in more frustrated customers), it's increasingly an option. There are a few vendors in the space, though I feel it's still waiting for its true visionary.