The suit is dead, long live the suit!

The death of the suit? Don't believe the rumours

In fact, dressing up has become more important than ever

Putting on your best. It feels like an almost risibly old-fashioned concept now, this idea that a man can be transformed – made better, yet somehow more like his true shining inner self – by dressing with immaculate formality.

Your grandfather would have subscribed to the theory of “your best”, no doubt your father too, and the philosophy was central to the aspirational ethos of working class northern England where I grew up.

Practically all of the working-class teenagers I grew up with devoted half their pay to clothes. Some just automatically handed it over to the brand store of the moment each week because that’s what you did.

In truth, we were no different to our grandfathers before us with the local tailor, always handing over wages for what was being made to wear down the club that Saturday night.

Clothes were not there to get you through the humdrum day but to help you reach for a better life. But dressing up now seems as distant as men walking on the moon.

How far away it all seems – one of my finest Holland & Sherry suits worn with a crisp Albini shirt accessorised with a carefully chosen Gitman tie, cufflinks, merino socks and newly polished Crockett & Jones shoes. What a palaver! Is all of that formalwear for the birds?

We might as well be talking about codpieces. Some of us spent long lockdown months seeking the perfect white T-shirt (my top six: Belstaff, Mr P, Uniqlo, The Armoury, Arket and Sunspel). But is that what dressing up looks like now? Putting on the perfect white T-shirt for your conference call? Is that really going to be your new best?

The momentum is only going one way– the dread drift towards comfy. But who wants an eternal dress-down Friday? Oh, loads of people. There are still workplaces adhering to an old-school dress code – it will be some time before lawyers and newsreaders toil in sportswear – but the numbers are dwindling. Even high finance has loosened its dress codes; JP Morgan has a chino-friendly credo of “business casual” and here’s the proof...

The occasions at which formal attire is required – black-tie events, weddings, funerals – are falling. And dressing down doesn’t mean you have to look like Mark Zuckerberg at his dowdiest. The firm in which I am an equity Partner, Tom James Company, is now doing a “custom casual” collection – this undeniably lovely 20-piece and counting collection is thriving and you should have some of it.

And while the lockdown dealt a body blow to the idea of a man putting on his best, the suit’s decline began with the financial crash of 2008. Who wears a suit when they no longer have a job?

“Even before the pandemic,” writes Nathan Brooker in the Financial Times, “sweatshirts, trainers, even yoga pants and shorts are becoming permitted workplace attire. Now, with widespread working from home, they are all there is.”

And don’t even get me started on gilet’s in the office, yuck, are you the new intern?

But I mourn dressing up. God, I miss my suits, for the suit is the alpha and omega of your best. And as we slob out in sporty kit for another day working from home or in only slightly less sporty kit if we’re heading into the office, the rich irony is that there is nothing more comfortable than a suit that we’ve had made for you. A suit from me is infinitely more than a gorgeous item of clothing that fits like a second skin. A suit from me is a mood-enhancing drug. I offer the finest bespoke tailoring on the planet and it changes everything: the way you look at the world; the way the world looks at you; the way you walk and think, your confidence. Off-the-peg suits bought when you found signs of wear in one of your other two to three suits changes nothing.

The epitaphs to dressing up may prove premature, for there is a trans-formative power in “your best”.

Men have been shaking off the shackles of compulsory formal dressing for years. What we wear in future will no longer be mandatory but an active choice. Perhaps 2020 saw the end of ugly, boring high street (what’s left of it) suits, for there is an unmatched, undeniable joy in dressing up, a satisfaction and a power. Your best kit sprinkles stardust on you and when you forsake that magic you embrace the ordinary, the mediocre, the lazy.

Some men can look good dressed informally – but they are always athletes in their physical prime. And even they still look better in a suit.

Things have changed, and that is true. Many – perhaps even a majority – will live and die in sportswear that has never seen the inside of a gym or indeed been worn to play any sport. But to some, to the spiritual descendants of those long-gone, northern grandfathers and beyond, posing and checking each other out, dressing up will become more important than ever.

Zuckerberg says he wears his grey T-shirt every day because he believes thinking about clothes is “silly” and “frivolous”. But there is nothing trivial about wanting to look and feel the best that you can.

Dressing up will never die, because your best is made to flatter, to inspire, to make you feel like you can conquer the world. You may find the greatest white T-shirt that any man has ever seen and it will still not do that for you.

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