What is the future of the business suit?

Rightly, Asian Americans are celebrated today worldwide for their strides in the world of emerging technologies.

?But they can also look proudly back to their ancestral contributions to the world of clothes and the economics of the clothing industry.?

?For some two centuries, silk from Asia underpinned economies of cities and countries in different parts of the world.

?One such is Scotland. “The town of Paisley in Scotland developed primarily around the textile industry, including printing, bleaching, and cotton spinning,“ reports?Microsoft Encarta Encyclopaedia. “The attractive curved patterns of silk and cotton paisley shawls… were based on Kashmiri designs and were manufactured in the town from 1805 until the 1870s.”

?Venice is another. “In 1423 the doge (ruler) of Venice, an Italian city-state, observed, ‘Now we have invested in our silk industry a capital of 10 million ducats and we make 2 millions annually in export trade; 16,000 weavers live in our city,’” Encarta also documents.

?And even in the second half of the 20th C, the paisley shawls briefly returned but this time as another Asian product, the Nehru jackets. The Nehru jackets, “which were inspired by the traditional men's coats of northern India,” according to the encyclopaedia’s historians, ”were made of luxurious materials such as antique paisley shawls”.

?With the 20thC however had also come radical changes in the world of work and attendant clothing. This was also a period of steroid power and expansion, including geographically, of the financial services industry. Asians, at home and in the Diaspora, came to register strongly, from around the second quarter of the 20thC, in financial and allied services globally, this boosted largely by record leaps in broadly experienced prosperity in Asia with multiplier effects in Asian communities worldwide. And this, perhaps not coincidentally, was also the era when Algerian born French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and Italian Georgio Armani, notably, besieged the world with “power-dressing” or “the power look or the executive look” for men and women.

?Asians both at home and in the Diaspora substantially drove the custom and overall business side of the power suits and allied sartorial productions. Sales soared in Japan and the then so-called Asian tigers and eventually China. So did points of sales of all the global brands.

?And now High tech (Hitech) is on what looks set to be a long ascendance, dragging with it, as perhaps never before in history by a single sector, all other economic and non-economic sectors of human life.

?And fashion historians have always reported, with a long train of records, fashion, across the many centuries, following power.

?Hitech is the new power centre and it is driving fashion. Within and without Hitech.

?While there may be no clear and direct correlation yet, Hitech is at least partially responsible for the fast vanquishing of suits in the workplace by what used to be tagged casuals or more recently “lifestyle” garments and accessories. And from the look of things, suits, be they relics of the Spanish court doublet; the French, Italian or English cuts in their incarnations, may have to start fighting against extinction.

?But what have Asian Americans to do with this? After all this is a global phenomenon.

?They have the power, growing power. The kind of power fashion historically respects.

?They, for one, have the economics. And they increasingly are a force in Hitech. And their population dynamics, including evolving demographics, point to their so being positioned well into at least the medium term.

?The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reports that:?“According to 2019 Census data, the median household income of Asian Americans was $93,759, as compared to $71,664 for non-Hispanic whites… Regarding employment, 54.6 percent of Asian Americans were employed in management, professional and related occupations, compared with 44.8 percent of the non-Hispanic white population. ... In 2019, the overall unemployment rate for Asians was 3.5 percent, as compared to 3.7 percent for non-Hispanic whites.”

?They have the numbers in an upwardly mobile and already wealthy population. Again according to EEOC based on Census data: “The U.S. Asian population grew 72% between 2000 and 2015 (from 11.9 million to 20.4 million), the fastest growth rate of any major racial or ethnic group.

?“As a result, more and more corporations, universities, think tanks, and politicians are trying to figure out how to best address the growing needs and tastes of Asian Americans.”

?Concomitantly, Asian Americans rank, in and outside Silicon Valley, second highest in Hitech which is substantially driving workplace clothing.

?“These jobs tend to provide higher pay and better benefits, and they have been more resilient to economic downturns than other private sector industries over the past decade,” reports EEOC.

?Analysing its own nationwide 2014 EEO-1 data, EEOC reports that nationwide in the high tech sector, Asian Americans accounted for 5.8 percent to 14 percent), next to whites with (63.5 percent to 68.5 percent. In the tech sector nationwide executives category, whites accounted for 83.3 percent and?Asian Americans followed with 10.6 percent to 19.5 percent.

?It gets more interesting in the Silicon Valley area. Again using its 2014 EEO-1 data to examine the labour force participation rate there, EEOC reports:??

“Among Executives, 57 percent of employees were white, 36 percent were Asian American, 1.6 percent were Hispanic and less than 1 percent were African American….

?“Asian Americans make up 50 percent of professional jobs among these firms while comprising 36 percent of management positions. … White employees make up 41 percent of professional jobs and 57 percent of management jobs.”

?With global power now in High tech and this seeming ongoing for at least the medium term, this sector is shaping the world of work and workplace clothing. And Asians, in Asia and in the Diaspora including Asian Americans, are a part of this new leader of fashion.

?This may be good news still for, for instance, Gap Inc in especially its Athleta range. ?

?But what happens to Saville Row, Brooks Brothers, the Milan gentlemen’s sartorial quarters and all such business addresses and names long founded on the western office or business suits?

Cover photo is a collage by Rose Umoren, with public domain pictures from Microsoft Encarta (2009)?and Saville Row (date unknown, obtained 2023)