In Western culture, the men’s suit is tied in with masculinity in a variety of ways. This is the first part of a planned three-part series teasing out some of the weird issues around suits and the wearing thereof.
Let’s start with the personal and move to the general. I’m generally considered a snappy dresser in the circles I move in, with a carefully designed wardrobe built around a signature look. In my case, that look is “time-travelling supervillain”.
You’ll note that I only wear double-breasted jackets, as I like the line of them much better than single-breasted. Seriously, a double-breasted jacket sucks in your waist and makes your shoulders look bigger. Why did we ever stop wearing them? I do own one single-breasted jacket, but that’s because it’s this one.
You’ll also note that I wear a gambler-style hat with added fedora dents, cocked at an angle so rakish it’s got three strains of clap. (Both surviving people who know what “rakish” used to mean are giggling right now.) I could go off for a while on my theory of hats and my general sartorial aesthetic, but let’s stick to suits for now.
I am, of course, not technically wearing a suit in any of those shots. I am wearing suit jackets or tuxedo jackets with various forms of trousers. I am also not wearing a tie, generally a requirement to be properly in a suit. Indeed, I am phasing out collared shirts from my wardrobe, so as to make it impossible to wear a tie. Goddamn, but I hate ties.
A similar style has arisen in Britain, with hip young gentlemen adopting the clothing and some of the manners of an idealized Edwardian upper middle class, calling themselves Chaps and smoking pipes (which I also do). They’ve even given rise to a perverse, half-satiric music style called, naturally enough, chap-hop.
The key to understanding what the chaps and I are doing with suits can be found in this chap-hop video. It at first seems incongruous that a guy would sing about the importance of proper attire and grooming while standing next to a dude dressed as Scooby-Doo, until you realize that they are both wearing costumes.
The iconography of the men’s suit is incredibly powerful in our culture, as well as being aesthetically rather sharp. It’s the fundamental image of male power, of the patriarchy itself. The guy in the suit is the guy in charge, we’re all subconsciously aware. There’s a whole world of gender and class and competition tied up in every notch lapel.
What the chaps and I (among others) are doing is wearing that imagery as a costume, as a deliberate evocation of the imagery of the suit without actually laying claim to the power or entering into the competition. We’re performing masculinity with the awareness that it is a performance. The iconography of masculine power becomes a menu, something from which one can pick out one’s favorite bits to put together a nice look and assemble a good costume. (For example, fuck ties.)
Of course, not everyone has the luxury of choice. In part two, I want to take some time to think about those who don’t get to decide how they perform masculinity.
I have to admit, my “power” ensemble is a black tailored waistcoat over a collared dress shirt (sleeves unbuttoned and rolled up to the elbows, gambler-style, in casual settings and rolled down/buttoned for formal occasions). Nothing like borrowing a bit of masculine imagery to make people sit up and pay attention.
Being a lady, though, I can skip the tie and jacket, wear the shirt in colors like wine red or spring green or orange-with-silver-and-gray-pinstripes, and choose to pair it all with slimline pinstriped dress slacks or a full ankle-length black wool skirt, if I like. (And I do.)
Jargon file definition of “suit”.
(Honestly, everything I say is past tense or hypothetical; money is very stretched in my household so all of my posh duds have been outgrown and given away without being replaced. But someday!) I’m going to back Noah on: the superiority of the double breasted jacket, hats, and pipe smoking. I’m going to have to go with the pro-tie camp. Regarding hats, I wear my hair long and my noggin is huge so I’m a bit limited in my hat options. When my hair’s back in a pony-tail, I tend to go with a fedora which means that, with my… Read more »
Well duh I thought that’s we were getting at here.
“noah while I have the utmost respect for anyone making their own style suits just aren’t me.”
That’s why people make their own style.
noah while I have the utmost respect for anyone making their own style suits just aren’t me.
@Danny: Go where I go: ZootSuitStore.com. Clothing with actual style and snazz, not the Men’s Wearhouse and their two hundred shades of drab and boring.
Also, for the fop on a budget, I recommend My Own Tuxedo, where you can buy ex-rental formal wear at huge discounts. I’ve got a lovely lapelless jacket that I got off them for thirty bucks, and a friend of mine recently picked up half a dozen vests in different colors, having finally found a cut that can accommodate her breasts.
Given the lack of a tie, I’d suggest a shirt with decorative buttons or (better) traditional studs instead of buttons (so the shirt has buttonholes on both sides and you insert the stud through like a cufflink on a French cuff.) I see you’re already using a button cover for the collar button, good choice.
I like the fact that my bf prefers trousers and button downs to jeans and tshirts. I tend to wear what most people would call a combination of business casual and “church” clothes, and having a guy in sloppy jeans and tshirts makes me feel like I stand out too much. Mostly though I find being comfortable to be the sexiest thing on earth, and he feels uncomfortable in jeans, so the trousers are his I am comfortable item, and it makes me all tingly inside.
1. Ties are a product of the devil.
2. My Afro rejects the thought of a hat.
3. I personally prefer functionality over looks.
4. Although I think my age is starting to catch up to me and find that my collection of simple tshirts just don’t do it for me anymore. Wardrobe shopping will commence next year.
I find that when I wear ties, people have a tendency to get in my personal space, and play with my ties…I’m guessing that isn’t a common expression of approval among men…? Don’t know what it is about wearing it that seems to give guys that kind of permission…
I still suck at working my ties. I’m not desperate enough to use clip-ons, but once I get a good knot, I leave it there and NEVER UNTIE IT EVER. I also get paranoid before I have to see anyone throughout the day constantly checking it to make sure its totally straight. People get really anal about other people’s ties.
I like when gangsters wear suits, like in RESERVOIR DOGS. Subversive!
“We need shotguns for this shit”
“@Jim: Thanks for saying so. As to my weight, I would earnestly like to get my number of visible chins down to one.” I understand that and that’s a question of taste anyway. But there are just some phenotype realities we all run up against. I was a teenager when straight blond hair was in fashion. Mine was brown and ringlety – oh well. You look to be of German or Central European ancestry. Those people look round and filled out even on a tuberculosis diet. It’s a feature, not a bug. Wait a few generations when skinny Celts and… Read more »
I think this article was written just to show off Noah’s hat.
I used to really like ties. Not because they were a choking neck constriction, but because they were a swappable piece of color and design. Even though I was very conservative. Plus it was like a distinctive marker – I went from late nights in the lab wearing jean/t-shirts, eating ramen soup and mac&cheese, to a real job.
@Schala About Matt Smith, according to news, when he started on Doctor Who there was an uprise in bowtie sales because young men saw how many women thought he was hot. It amused me.
As for other nice “suits”, this is my favorite: http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kwrjikm1zD1qa1vdfo1_500.png Nice jacket and a cutely undone tie, with a t-shirt and a baseball cap.
I would like my boyfriend or friends to wear clothing that looks dandyish, to accompany my sweet lolita clothing, so it looks less like “he’s with a costumed girl” and more like “they’re a costumed couple”, even if the effect I’m really going for is “wow, nice clothes” (it is quite a bit quality, having cost 25,000 yen + shipping, even if you count that the brand accounts for a part of the cost) or indifference/uninterest.
Thanks for raising the topic! I’m a professional, classical singer, so I dress in coat and tie, suit, or black tie much more often than the average fellow. And I think this discussion is missing a bit of subtlety, around the different ways a suit be worn. “Wearing a suit” is as varied a thing as “wearing a dress.” Wall street types often wear fitted suits with broad pinstripes, ties in big power knots and brash, arrogant pocket squares. When I lived in San Francisco, pimps would wear three piece silk suits in bright colors, with matching canes, hats, and… Read more »
@Barbara: I get my shirts from here, though I have recently discovered the existence of this, and am mournfully decrying my poverty.
@Chris R: I’d never heard the term “granddad shirt” before, but on searching, I discovered this site, which I find quite tempting. A possible way to maintain my basic look in a more casual mode.
@Jim: Thanks for saying so. As to my weight, I would earnestly like to get my number of visible chins down to one.
“It’s the fundamental image of male power, of the patriarchy itself.”
It sure is and it’s ironic, it’s a good example of “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” When suits came in they were as down-scale as bluejeans were in the 50’s. Suits read as bourgeoisie in an age when aristocrats still had all the social restige, jeans read as blue-collar for decades.
BTW way, Noah, you look sharp. Do I remember you saying you feel you carry a little more weight than you should? You don’t, at least not in these picures.
A ‘suit’ is a set of matching coat and pants, with maybe a vest, all cut from the same cloth. A jacket or coat that does not have matching pants is a ‘sport coat’.
‘Formal’ technically means ‘formal evening clothes’ (tux or white tie and black tail coat) or morning coat and striped trousers. ‘Semi-formal’ means a business suit
Personally, I wear a business suit while working, because I want to Fit In. I wear jeans and a sport coat (or what ever)while partying because I want to stand out.
@Darque, Noahbrand:
“Zeus’s Thunder! Agnes, the Tiny Model Catapult!”
“Oui, Sir!”
“Ever the Lady, eh Agnes?”
“Oui, sir!”
Seriously though, I like dress shirts, but I don’t find many uses for ties. Interestingly, I’ve used smart dress in one of my videos. Behold! (And yes, I am a SHAMELESS Self-promoter):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT6E7jjUxr4
The chao thing seems to be mostly popular among young tories, I’m wary of reading too much irony into it. Or rather, the irony is mostly self deprecating defensive irony like that used by metalheads: they really do wish they were edwardian aristocrats, they are also aware that most people consider this stupid and so pre-emptively mock themselves for it.
I was never a fan of suits, shirts, or ties. I find it looked too much like a uniform, made me out to be a numeroted slave without any importance or uniqueness. And the choices all looked bland (more of the same with small variations in color or tone, at best). Plus I never liked how ties looked, and never liked putting any kind of emphasis on my shoulders (I also don’t do so for hips if you’re wondering). If we’re talking costume-like clothing, lolita fashion is what I like. It’s really not something you want to get dirty (given… Read more »
“I am loving the collar-less shirt look you have there, Noah. My bf is also an anti-collar person, but aside from individually altering each dress shirt he likes, finding such shirts is very difficult. How do you do it? Is there a particular name for that style that I can search for?”
When I was younger my sister and me had a few and we always called them “grandad shirts”. That might have just been us being wierd though.