Clothes Make The Man

And technology makes the clothes

I’ve written about suits before, but here’s a bit of a followup.  Today, as is my tradition, I wore a suit for the first day of classes, a dark gray Canali with a hint of brown, one of several I bought at the half-price Canali sale at Saks over a decade ago.  (They all look like new because they’ve probably been worn an average of about ten times apiece.)

It looked pretty good; it’s not my favorite Canali but it’s nice, and kinda warm.

But I also recently purchased another one of those suits advertised on social media, the X-Suit.

It was on sale for $499, less than half what the Canali cost at half price a decade ago.

Is it as nice as the Canali?  Well, no.  The fabric is synthetic, although it has a surprisingly nice hand.  The cut is more flattering than the similarly Internet-marketed Sene suit I pictured in my last post – a colleague who pays close attention to my wardrobe choices told me that she thought that one suppressed my shoulders too much – and the jacket is a bit roomier and more comfortable.  That’s not a matter of fit so much as not hewing quite so closely to the modern close-fit style, which I’m not really a fan of.  It has nice internal pockets, which I like for carrying boarding passes, passports, etc. when traveling.

And if you pour water on the X-suit it runs off.  An unfortunate queso incident while wearing it demonstrated that it doesn’t stain even with, well, queso that’s had time to dry.  (Can’t take me anywhere).  That came off with a damp paper towel, but you can wash it in the washing machine.  In fact, you have to – it says not to dry clean.  And it looks pretty good.  As someone who once sold high-end men’s clothes, and who cares about such things, I can tell the difference.  But I doubt that most people really can, or would care.

There were synthetics in the 1970s that purported to be like this, but they weren’t, really.  They felt like plastic, they didn’t wear well, and they didn’t take properly to tailoring.  They tended to look saggy and cheap.  Technology has advanced, and that lets our lives change.  (I’m having a bit of a Postrel moment here, and I recommend her book, The Fabric of Civilization:  How Textiles Made the World. It’s all about this sort of thing).

And just as the gun (or the camera)  you carry with you is better than the one you left in a drawer at home, maybe the suit you’ll actually wear is better than the one hanging in a closet at home.  Certainly I would wear this suit places I wouldn’t wear, say, the pearl-gray Canali (like a New York cab), and since it doesn’t wrinkle I can pack it in a small overnight bag, while the Canali calls for a hanging bag.  It’s nice for travel on a plane or train.  For fancier occasions, it’s still Canali.  But this opens up other occasions.

Well, like a camera or a gun, you want to own more than one kind of suit for various needs and settings.  But the rise of cheaper and better-looking and -feeling synthetics makes it easier and more comfortable to wear a suit in places where traditional suits would have been awkward – just as the rise of phone cameras and subcompact carry guns makes guns and cameras easier to carry with you than they used to be.

My hope is that this will lead to at least a modest return to suit-wearing.  Because not only do men in suits look better – ask almost any woman – but I think men in suits probably feel better, think better, and move more confidently.  I’m not saying that more suit-wearing will solve America’s problems, but it couldn’t hurt.  And haven’t we gone about as far with schlub-wear as we can go?  (Please, let us have gone as far with schlub-wear as we can go.)

Will technology promote a cultural shift in men’s clothing?  Not by itself.  But it doesn’t hurt.