Business Casual

The other day, I read a post  on Put This On about dressing down a suit, and I thought I might offer my own two cents on the subject. As someone who only ever wears a suit by choice, it's something I think about now and then. I personally tend to prefer a sports jacket and trousers most of the time. It's a look that is inherently less dressy than a suit, and allows for more room to play. Jackets can range in color and texture from the staid formality of a classic and well cut navy blazer to tweeds and linens in all manner of bright color and pattern. Still, I do like to wear a suit sometimes. The tough thing is that many suits, particularly navy and grey, are difficult to wear without looking like you're dressed for a business setting, which I never am, so it helps to find ways to soften the edges. 

I'm not a fan of the look of a suit with no tie, something that's become increasingly popular in the past few years. To me, it always looks like you just left the office and are out grabbing a beer before heading home, in other words, like an incomplete outfit. Rather, I like to use accessories and minor details less aligned with business situation to do the trick. Pictured above is a worsted grey pinstripe suit, ($12.98 in a thrift shop), softened with a glen check tie in an earth tone, a pattern and color hinting more at country clothing ($1.99),and a densely printed paisley square rather than white ($2.99, found in the ladies scarves in a thrift store). A white shirt with a suit like this may be as proper as can be with a suit like this, but I opted for a softer one with a button down collar by Brooks Brothers ($5.49). 

Instead of black, all my leather accessories are brown. Added to that, the shoes are heavy longwing brogues, another style derivative of country clothing. The skull and bones socks are perhaps totally silly, but again, a good degree less formal than plain black or grey. (side note: don't wear argyle socks with a suit, ever. I hate that.)

With a little whiff of imagination, you can wear your business clothes in a more casual way.

p.s. In writing this post and searching back through my own blog for links, I realize that I have written much the same thing on this same topic about this same suit before, right about this time of year when I first pull this suit out of storage (see here). I suppose that means that a grey pin stripe suit really is the most challenging thing to wear outside of its proper context of business, or that immutable things like classic menswear are hard to blog about for over five years without at least a little repetition. Oops.

Legend and Reality

A "Brooks Brothers Man", circa 1980s. Via The Trad

A current "Brooks Brothers Man". Photo via BrooksBrothers.com

There is a lot that continues to amaze me about the thing we have taken to calling, for lack of a better term, the "online menswear community". The very existence of such a thing in the first place is enough to astound anyone old enough to remember what life was like before such large portions of it were spent in front of any one of a number of screens. At the age of 37, I just barely make that category, but I can still remember stretching the phone cord down the hall from the kitchen to my room for some privacy.

 By and large, the world of blogs and websites devoted to menswear, or anything else, has proved to be a largely positive thing. There is no end of information readily available on any subject, and with it comes an even wider range of opinion and comment. All that's good, but it can lead to a blurring of the lines between legend and truth, and can foster a spirit of extreme narrow-mindedness about rules, regulations, and traditions, be they real or imagined. Nowhere it seems is this truer than in the circles of menswear enthusiasts, with Brooks Brothers so often saddled with the dual personality of Vanguard of Tradition/Soulless Traitor, or rather Legend/Reality.

If you're reading this blog, chances are you have at least once encountered a blog or website where some one happened to mention that Brooks Brothers clothes are not precisely the same as they may have been some time ago, which was quickly followed by a torrent of comments bemoaning everything from the difficulty one has in finding a dartless jacket to the absolute downfall of civilization as we know it.  I would never say that there is no meaning attached to the things we were, but the fervor over the smallest minutiae that tends to occur when discussing menswear, particularly "traditional" menswear, can be staggering. Too bad, really, as this sort of thinking misses the point entirely of dressing well or with style. 

Pictured above are two men representing Brooks Brothers. The first is from a mid-1980s catalog, the second from the current website. Both men wear a charcoal striped business suit. The first, a three piece, no doubt in a conservative, natural shouldered, three button "sack" (dartless) cut with flat front trousers. His hair is grey, distinguished. He is a grown up, no kidding.The second man's suit is cut in a more modern "trim" style. Some might say that his clothes look to small, and I would agree. But remember, he is a model on a website, not you. There is nothing stopping you from buying the same suit he is wearing in a size that fits you more appropriately. Lets not forget also that the first man is not  real person, but a watercolor painting.

You know the drill, you've heard it all before : "That suit is deplorable. Brooks should be ashamed.", "I blame the Italians.", or best "Why can't Brooks Brothers make things like they used to?" I mean, god help them, don;t they know there are literally dozens of us who would buy a frumpy sack suit from them, as long as it also met a further list of minute requirements?

The fact is that the world is not the same place it was forty years ago. Brooks Brothers is a huge international company making business decisions based on things bigger than the tastes and proclivities of an increasingly small pocket of men in the United States. Simple as that. You may hear people bemoaning what they see as the death knell for Brooks all over the menswear blogs, but as far as I can see, from a business stance, they seem to be doing just fine. That is, after all, what businesses do. Besides, so many of the Legends of Brooks Brothers could stand to be tempered with a healthy brick of salt. The "rules" that are regarded as sacrosanct when it comes to this stuff were never really so strictly observed by the real men of New England who wore this stuff.

I was reminded of this recently while on a consignment house call in an affluent Massachusetts suburb. The clothing I was looking at belonged to a deceased surgeon. It was all very traditional, lots of Brooks Brothers. There were grey sack suits and three patch pocket blazers, plenty of striped ties. But among the stacks of khakis, cords, and moleskins, I found as many pleated fronts as flats. There were button down and point collar shirts in the same closet. Some jackets had darts, some didn't. And they were all worn together by the same man, a real "Brooks Brothers Man" if you will. True, there was a traditional East Coast consistency in his style, but nowhere did I see rigid adherence to minute rules.

The "sack suit" has been romanticized to represent some sort of lost ideal of manhood, maybe, or something. But let's not forget that the undarted jacket and flat front pants, even the two button cuffs, were likely cost saving decisions made so long ago by Brooks Brothers, when the sack suit was the first off the rack clothing available. I love a good sack suit as much as the next traditionalist, but you might say those details also represent the inception of mass-produced clothing. We can thank Brooks Brothers for that, along with the  introduction of Dupont Dacron Polyester. Look where those two innovations led. These facts are easily ignored or forgotten in these discussions. So can we really be surprised or blame Brooks Brothers for paying attention to the market and making business decisions based not on the grousing of a few but the potential to sell as many items as possible? Isn't that kind of what they've always done? Legend/reality?

If what I've said seems negative or bleak, it shouldn't. There is a positive in all this. The world will likely never require men to dress as well as they once did, but that makes doing all the more an act of individuality and self expression. Where the suit was once a type of conformity, it now as frequently represents the opposite. So don't get bogged down in silly rules regarding pleats and vents and button down collars. Let your tastes guide you. Real style never had much to do with rules anyway. Dressing well should be enjoyable. I believe we should venerate what is good in our past, and that these days the "new" is so revered for its own sake that we tend to neglect the past. However, pining for an idealized version of the past and constantly whining about change neither venerates the past nor respects the present or future. It only shows you've missed the point. Don't confuse legend and reality.

Dress well and enjoy it. Otherwise, what's the point?

The Man From Brooks Brothers

Brooks Brothers isn't what it used to be. There was a time when you could tell a guy was wearing Brooks Brothers from half a block down the street. A certain combination of subtle but distinct details in cut, styling and fit was a clear signal. These days, its hard to know what that means, or meant, especially for younger guys who never saw it first hand. But when you see it all together, it still makes sense.

The high buttoning 3/2 roll...the undarted front...the natural barely padded shoulders. Combined with flat front, slightly high waisted pants with a conservative cut through the legs and cuffed hems. Behold the now iconic #1 sack suit. Acquired in trade some months ago from Newton Street Vintage, I've been waiting for a nice chilly day to wear it. On the feet, double soled shell cordovan longwings by Allen Edmonds. What else?

Given this suits late 1950s/early 1960s provenance, a narrow repp striped bow tie of similar vintage seemed the perfect choice. A soft rolling unlined button collar was also a given. Now usually I'm not one to go full blast vintage, preferring instead to mix older pieces with well made modern things, but in this case the combination picked itself.

All of it vintage,all of it made in USA, all of it Brooks Brothers. It's hard to argue with that.

p.s. there are some photos of what to expect from Eddigan's, a furniture consignment shop and Top Shelf rookie, over at the TSFM blog. Check it out.