On Being a Suit

A while back I wrote a piece about buying a formal business suit and the language of suits. I may have just experienced the consequences of that language barrier.

Periodically I have lunch with my friend the Broker. He is always dressed well, in the uniform of a financial advisor; a conservatively cut grey suit, white shirt and tie. (I should note that the only conservative thing about him is his suit.) I am dressed for whatever I happen to be doing that day. This often means jeans, a flannel shirt, a Johnson Wool work jacket, and work boots.

We often go to a good Chinese restaurant in Burlington, where the food is miles above your usual American/Chinese industrial fare. I never really consciously registered it before this, but the waitstaff have always been friendly and personable. I have worked in a restaurant kitchen myself, so I do my best to treat restaurant staff with respect and friendliness, and it comes back to me.

The other day I decided to dress the part for our lunch, since we would actually be discussing financial issues. I donned a Brooks Brothers suit (charcoal pinstripe), shined my formal black shoes, and put a neat knot in my tie. The Broker and I strode into the restaurant looking like serious financiers. The hostess approached us and – how to put it – ice crystals formed in the air in front of her. She was unfailingly polite, but it was as if we were wearing Klan robes. She never hinted at a smile in any of our interactions. Our waiter was solemn and deferential, and seemed nervous, as if we were about to attack him. The Broker and I were our usual cheerful selves, but all the good will hit a glass wall and slid to the floor. I had never experienced this kind of reaction at this restaurant, or any restaurant, for that matter.

I mentioned my impressions to the Broker later in an email and got this response:

Yeah, I felt the cold glare from that hostess. The Russian waiter seemed more like he was miscast in the wrong movie. After years of people sure they've got my number because of the suit, I get a certain sort of secret pleasure in brandishing it. I've found, ironically, that it can get the most negative reaction from those who most vehemently profess their liberal open-mindedness. Try it sometime, now that you are an initiate.

I guess we did look like bankers at a lunch meeting, cheerfully engineering the next financial collapse and how to extract our outrageous bonuses from it. Usually we look like a successful businessman and his not-so well off brother-in-law.

I related the story to a friend who is a manager at a non-profit. He told me about a workshop he had just attended which was about giving good presentations. The instructor noted that researchers had found that 60% of an audience’s impression of the speaker came from clothing and general appearance. Maybe 15% came from the actual content of the presentation. Bloviate how you will, but wear the right costume for the crowd.

Of course, this makes me wonder how many snap judgments I have inflicted on people based on clothing. Perhaps fewer than most people, given my own performance as a clothing chameleon. But still, most of our judgments happen before we have a chance to consciously register them. People who research these things find that we make emotional snap judgments and then quickly construct intellectual justifications for them post hoc.

I also wonder whether the clothes really did make the man. That is, did I subtly change my behavior because of the clothes I was wearing? Did I come across as arrogant or distant because I was unconsciously “brandishing” my suit?

Get dressed at your own risk.

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.