The Different Equal
A curious hypocrisy
How many people did you see wearing a full suit on the street before the Pandemic? And how many do you see in your Zoom meetings — remember the full part? In my experience, the number of people doing that (or dressed up at all) is small and seems dwindling. Yet, I have recently read an article about a man who just could not be satisfied with his suits. Asside from his clear confusion about tailored, MTM (made to measure) and bespoke suits, his argument was quite plainly: he does not feel himself in a suit. And that is fine, people can like whatever kind of clothes. However, he does not end his argument there. He claims suits are about fitting in and that he just does not feel like doing that. And that to me seems absolutely false. What we can see all around is casualness. Hoodies, sneakers, joggers, t-shirts and so on, that is what people are wearing. Some guys also go for a repetitive shirt, always in a certain checks pattern, from what I can tell. And this trend has been going on for at least 2 decades. So how can wearing something that nobody else is wearing be about fitting in?
“Oh, but it is in the office”, proclaims the opposition. Well, even Goldman Sachs does not require a full suit and tie anymore. There may have been a time when the suit was a uniform and a box, but that is no longer the general case, even in the corporate world. There was also a time when the box was the morning coat. Would anyone proclaim it is now? No, anyone who would proclaim morning dress to be about fitting in would surely have some delusion about living in the start of the 20th century. And yet, while many proclaim the death of the suit, one still argues it is the box. It should be clear now that the business suit is "dead", as it is no longer required for the naming reason: business. Quite the opposite, people now clearly think, and the article states as much, that: "a business suit screams loudly in someone’s face, 'I’m better than you!'". It is true, of course, that people send signals by they way they dress, but it is hardly true that all understanding is made the same. It is in this mystical belief that the suit (and similar ideas) is just a box that casualness fuels itself over and over as an ideology. However, it is fueled in practice more generally by a "I don't care" attitude. By which I mean men may trend to casualness with style, but that cannot be further from the truth. The truth is style has not been incorporated into most casual living, because a fantasy has proclaimed that stylish clothing is uncomfortable and you should thus wear what is comfortable, not what is stylish.
Wasteful Reality
In reality, comfort and style are only opposite, only a trade-off, if there is no worry for quality. For example, most people who rant on about how much discomfortable dress shoes can be have little to no experience in trying out different types of foot cushioning. They have likely stumbled upon some cheap cardboard sole structure and proclaimed that all shoes are like that with their limited information. No EVA soles, and specially no cork soles have been tried on their dress shoes. And it should come without saying that the lower quality choice is also environmentally wasteful. But if there is worry for quality, comfort and eco-friendliness are almost never an issue. Curiously, the clothing participation in the average budget has increased as more "affordable" clothing has entered the frame. Why is that? For something of lower quality to perform for the same time as a high quality equivalent, it needs to be bought more than once, while the other only once.
In this model, we might observe also the difference between the fabrics used. The fast cycling and wasteful industry has chosen to use plenty of artificial fibres, and they do not decompose easily, being even worse for the environment once discarded than the already longer wearing natural fibres. But it is not all about the world, it is also about principle. Why would you want to buy something that you are only going to wear once or so? Do you find your taste so detestable that you need to change it every so often? Well, I suppose that may be Wilde's logic about fashion — and do take note of the difference between style and fashion:
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Continuing on the distinction of style, I must quote a certain YouTube ad: "if you are not a nudist, style is for you". It is thus that being careless enough to increase waste, have poor quality and look bad is just a plain bloody triple negative. On the other hand, creating your personal style, selecting a foundational wardrobe of quality and durability is not only good for your looks, but also for your wallet and the environment — a triple positive. So, by all means, stop lying to yourself.
A Self-Sustaining Hypocrisy
Underlying the ideology of casualness is actually just carelesness. But one cannot be careless if everyone else is not, so in order not to care, you must first make caring seem pointless. And this is by no means a directed thing, it is merely another fashion trope, that has gained strength as the focus has fled the halls of power to the general industry. However, said trend has already become mainstream, a simple walk on quite literally any street will demonstrate that. On the other hand, the ideological discourse about limited trappings presented by certain garments has not vanished. But at this point they are taking water from an empty pond. Unless you work at a Viennese opera, a palace or something quite specific, the business suit (and other items) is very much dead and buried. And so, it is puzzling to see people proclaim how innovative they are by doing something that everyone else is also doing. What is clear here is that the sense of reality has been shed. The core ideology of casualness, having lost its object of protest, has just carried on, self-reassuring, in an odd manner. This is by no means an evil phenomenon — though wasteful —, but a curious way of observing how people register [or not exactly] reality. Anyway, it should be noted that the business suit is dead, but the suit itself is not.
If people are wearing casual clothing in a lazy manner, suddenly the opposite has become true. The odd ball, as mr. Robert Armstrong puts it in an article for the Financial Times, is not the guy with the joggers, the Nike Air Forces or the repetitive checks shirt. The odd ball is the guy that knows how to properly shine his shoes, the different patterns, and ties, and jackets, and leathers and much more. To most, as he states,
shoe polish and ties and all the rest of the junk I long for is emblematic of a hierarchical, uncomfortable and pretentious form of masculinity that is on its way out.
Strange, really. Taking the theme of masculinity on, one should note that the historical origin of the suit is very unmanly by what most rule-spouters would call masculine today. And not only of the suit. The specific history of the suit is revealing. There was the already mentioned morning coat, but there was the frock coat too and others before it. Things were considered at the time to be very mute, for as Beau Brummel put it: "to be truly elegant one should not be noticed". Yes, this was a major tone down from the Ancien Régime world, ruled by the French le monde, but somehow we have managed to tone down the toned down through an entire century. And so there are now two types of utterly opposite people on this issue:
- The people who go with the "bring back manly men", that suffer from presentism, having no idea what lies beyond their narrow, really bigoted, conception of how style works through history and, thus, on humanity itself.
- The people that rant about an already dead way of mandatory dressing, and proclaim they are being restrained by the world, while having created the very real, very casual and toned down reality that generates the restrictive notion from the first group of people.
And so, given all of this, let us return to the specific of the suit. If the suit is no more the for-all uniform, it has become nothing short of a way of self-expression. That is why when thinking of the dead suit one thinks of largely baggy fitting, a truly timed frame: the timed frame of the power suit. It is likely that you think of some lawyer or politician when criticising the suit. However, it is also likely that you find the characters from Suits stylish. Why? Because the éthos is not the same. The first is the uniform of the powerless and constricted, indeed — though also largely dead. But the latter is a sign that the thing works. That is why as we continue the march towards the casual age, we also have a sartorialist enclave that can be found all over the world and web. From mr. Jacomet's Sartorial Talks, the Gentleman's Gazette and other information sources to brands like Gaziano & Girling and Tailor Store; quality is very much alive. And so it is that we can wait and see how things go as, thanks to the environmental limitations, this is no longer just a matter of personal taste.
