The Language of Suits

Your Minor Heretic has never been a clothes horse. Jeans and work shirts are the norm for me, with the occasional display of a tweed jacket and khakis when I want a little professorial cred. Every man has a turning point, though.

In my role as a renewable energy consultant I have to make a presentation at a prestigious country club to the board of a well funded organization. When I thought about the venue and the audience I realized that tweed and khakis wouldn’t cut it. Time to buy a suit. Being ignorant, but realizing both my ignorance and that there are subtleties to the selection of suits, I turned to my friend The Broker.

He is a successful manager at a brokerage firm with a name you would recognize. He knows the game, plays the game well, and enjoys the game, but realizes that it is a game and stays somewhat aloof and amused by it all. I owe him much of my understanding of the financial markets (such as it is) and appreciate his window into that world. I have lunch with him regularly and on a recent outing I pumped him for information on the language of suits. He gave me a raft of information, which he then helpfully summarized in the email below. Oh brave new world.

Here's what I'd look for in a suit:

2 button jacket, not three, which was a bit of a trendy fad that is fortunately (in my view) going out.

Plain front pants, versus pleated. Pleated are a perfectly acceptable classic look but your build wants plain front and it is a slightly cleaner, more contemporary look without being trendy or affected. Affected being the sartorial offense only slightly eclipsed by tacky. And, yeah, you want cuffs on the pants.

Materials: a light to mid-weight wool worsted will work in all but the hottest days. You may want a spring-summer suit and a fall-winter suit. I love the three-piece suit, despite my nasty comment.* I think it is a perfect expression of Minor H. Just know that it is a more academic look and statement which, I suspect, may be spot on for much of your work. But if you find yourself doing a Power Lunch with some mogul you may want to think about whether or not the vest communicates what you want.

For Wall Street or a more formal look I go for black, navy, charcoal, pinstripe, neither of which sound appropriate to me for your Sunday afternoon at the Country Club. For that I suggest a mid-tone gray, a nice glen plaid or even a nice tan with an interesting texture or pattern ( a la the Land's End example I attached). The suit says "serious, professional, committed." The friendly color and material say "Sunday afternoon at the Country Club" and "I'm not some schmuck trying too hard to sell you something." If you get the cut and fit right, then it winks and nods to the assembled Prepoisie that you know the game.

The other cues in that game are Brooks Brothers shirts which are immediately recognizable to the initiated by their rounded barrel cuff edges and the rounded pockets. Again, a shirt with some stripes or color or a nice pattern will also be more Sunday afternoon and less Monday boardroom. That will play well in Brookline.

(* Nasty comment: Three piece suits are only seen in a five mile radius around Cambridge Massachusetts.)

There’s a lot of information packed in there, but no more than is packed into a well-made glen plaid two-button suit with a Brooks Brothers cuff peeking out. The exercise of choosing a suit has brought to the forefront of my attention how much we signal each other with our clothes. There are some people who deliberately work with their clothing style to communicate, but most of us just have some basic idea of what’s appropriate for various situations and choose clothing by some mixture of work requirements, brand loyalty, and color preference. Our broadcast of our identities is unconscious. My friend The Broker knows the language and employs it consciously. The only other person I know who employs the language of clothing so consciously is a costume designer. And now I do.

This plunge into business clothing has made me think about that most impractical piece of men’s clothing, the tie. A man’s tie is a decoration, but mostly it is a sign. I’ve been trying out a number of messages to attach to the tie, and I have distilled it down to “I care.” A man wears a tie for professional situations to signify a serious attitude. He wears a tie to social functions to express his opinion that said function is special in some way, elevated above the norm. The color and pattern of the tie can signal an allegiance to a university, a club, or an arm of the military. It can also signal an ironic counter-message to the formality of the form.

I ended up going to a Brooks Brothers outlet with The Librarian. She was my unbiased set of fashion conscious eyeballs. The woman at the outlet was competent and not too pushy. I tried on some suits. The Librarian approved of a grayish-tan glen plaid and a dark gray pinstripe. I went out in the parking lot and got on my cellphone for some last minute coaching from The Broker. Then I dropped a few benjamins on the suits, plus one blue and one white narrow cut shirt. I passed over the shirts in light purple, teal, and I-ate-too-many-jalapeno-poppers-and-drank-too-many-strawberry-daquiris-and-puked. I also passed over the many ties that the saleswoman proffered. The patterns and colors were suitable for signaling high-altitude rescue aircraft, or perhaps luring amorous poison dart frogs. My explanation for the eyeball-spanking coloration is that while the form and mere presence of the tie signals formality, its color and pattern are the last outlet for personal expression in business attire. As with plumbing, the smaller the outlet, the harder the spray.

I’m ready for my presentation and some years of presentations after that. I’m also set up with a refreshed perception of clothing. Earlier today I found myself waiting at the bottom of a set of stairs for a group of men to pass by. Four out of five had dark suits, white shirts, and unexceptional ties. The fifth man was in jeans and a sweater. Given the building they came out of, I figured them for a mix a lawyers and lobbyists. The point is that I actually noticed that they had virtually duplicate dark suits and plain ties, and wondered about the contrast with the guy in jeans. New eyes for me.

I can’t end this without relating a story from my college days. I dressed raggedly and colorfully back then, a post-hippie, I guess. I was invited to a Halloween party and wanted a counterintuitive costume. I scrounged among my friends and assembled a full-on business suit, a good trench coat, and a briefcase. I parted my hair on one side and tucked my (now departed) ponytail down the back of my shirt collar. Wearing no mask or makeup, I presented myself at the front door of my friend’s house. The very woman who had invited me answered the door, looked me full in my uncovered face, and asked, “Um, can I help you?” She stared at me without recognition until I said my name. She was startled, laughed, and invited me in. The clothes make the man.



Comments

[The Broker]

I am now humbled and flattered.

It is easy to get cynical about the whole thing, and I suppose I evidence a fair amount of that attitude in my email. But I finally came to the conclusion you did too. Clothes are a conversation, especially in a formal situation, a social setting with forms: weddings, funerals, legislative hearings, visits to the doctor, etc. Sure we have inherited a lot of silly and archaic, sometimes even objectionable conventions with those rituals but they generally do their function well: we don't have to completely improvise what to do and can focus on the important matter at hand. Especially in those situations, you are going to say something with your clothes whether you want to or not, so it's best to understand the language and grammar and say it well. When my kids were little they would watch my costuming ritual with fascination: the collar stays, the tying of the tie, insertion of the cuff links, threading of the belt (no suspenders), the polishing of the shoes, and donning of the jacket.
"Why, Papa," they would ask, "do you have to do that?"
"Because," I finally figured out, "it helps my clients know that we are doing something serious, that they and their time are very important, and that I care."

Cheers! Brandish that tie with skill and compassion.

[cvv]

What a hoot! Your mother will fall over! :-)

[robby]

WTF, no picture of humble blogger stylishly attired?