<story><title>What&apos;s a $4000 Suit Worth?</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/whats-a-4000-suit-worth.html?pagewanted=all</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dredmorbius</author><text>Yet another submarine:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing.&lt;p&gt;$4000 is several times what I spend on clothes in a year.  It&apos;s several times what I spend on clothes in &lt;i&gt;several&lt;/i&gt; years.  There&apos;s a far less expensive option that&apos;s highly satisficing.  Suits, once an inexpensive, practical, standardized alternative to more ornate and expensive clothing, are now the expensive, frequently impractical attire. The lead time to purchase is too long.  And a far lower grade of tailoring is more than sufficient for virtually any occasion.  That&apos;s basic facts.&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions -- people for whom the expense is neither extravagent nor unneccessary.  It&apos;s a pretty small crowd, well within the top 1%, and probably more like the top 0.01%.  Then divide by two, because, well, very few women wear suits (though women&apos;s fashion is its own discussion).&lt;p&gt;As TFA notes, bespoke tailoring doesn&apos;t scale.  And it strongly suggests a rather fragile relationship between the garment and the wearer -- I can change in multiple of 25 separate measurements within a few months to a years time -- does this render a suit poor-fitting?&lt;p&gt;The made-to-measure alternative exists, and for many or most, it&apos;s a more-than-acceptable alternative for either formal or casual clothing.  With correctly chosen measuring points, and if necessary, some additional tailoring, garments can be made to fit quite well.  Cloth is pretty fungible.  Sticking to conservative fashions, styles, and cuts means you&apos;ll have something that will wear well for years.  And in a world in which off-the-rack sizing is increasingly problematic (aggressively styled cuts with little sizing leeway result in more frustrated customers), it&apos;s increasingly an option.  There are a few vendors in the space, though I feel it&apos;s still waiting for its true visionary.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pinaceae</author><text>If you get out of your tech-bubble, you&apos;ll notice this as very far from the truth.&lt;p&gt;Suits are the work dress in consulting, financial services, pretty much anything where you&apos;re clients demand respect and are not in IT (IT and personal visual aestethics have an inverse relationship, in any big company you can easily tell who is in IT).&lt;p&gt;Try to attend a management meeting in Europe, China, Japan without a suit.&lt;p&gt;Within the suit world people from the US are also highly visible as the art of fashion seems to have been lost. While the rest of the world went with tighter forms, US men still wear balloon shaped trousers, as if the 80s never stopped. And the number one tell are the shoes. Italians shape the shoe world, pointy and long have been the way to go for some time now - but US men go in with big black round things, often not even polished properly. This goes up to CEO level.&lt;p&gt;There are certain elements of a push-back right now in the US as well, the first one being the success of the tv-series Mad Med which is a big advertisement for fashion and representative clothing. The second being a resurgence of elegant, masculine fashion - see blogs like the Sartorialist for a glimpse into that: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesartorialist.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thesartorialist.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;A well-fitted suit does not signal money, it signals TASTE. Which is very hard to talk about in tech circles. Like looking at a well set up VIM instance, it tells you about the owner&apos;s habits.</text></comment>
<story><title>What&apos;s a $4000 Suit Worth?</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/whats-a-4000-suit-worth.html?pagewanted=all</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dredmorbius</author><text>Yet another submarine:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing.&lt;p&gt;$4000 is several times what I spend on clothes in a year.  It&apos;s several times what I spend on clothes in &lt;i&gt;several&lt;/i&gt; years.  There&apos;s a far less expensive option that&apos;s highly satisficing.  Suits, once an inexpensive, practical, standardized alternative to more ornate and expensive clothing, are now the expensive, frequently impractical attire. The lead time to purchase is too long.  And a far lower grade of tailoring is more than sufficient for virtually any occasion.  That&apos;s basic facts.&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions -- people for whom the expense is neither extravagent nor unneccessary.  It&apos;s a pretty small crowd, well within the top 1%, and probably more like the top 0.01%.  Then divide by two, because, well, very few women wear suits (though women&apos;s fashion is its own discussion).&lt;p&gt;As TFA notes, bespoke tailoring doesn&apos;t scale.  And it strongly suggests a rather fragile relationship between the garment and the wearer -- I can change in multiple of 25 separate measurements within a few months to a years time -- does this render a suit poor-fitting?&lt;p&gt;The made-to-measure alternative exists, and for many or most, it&apos;s a more-than-acceptable alternative for either formal or casual clothing.  With correctly chosen measuring points, and if necessary, some additional tailoring, garments can be made to fit quite well.  Cloth is pretty fungible.  Sticking to conservative fashions, styles, and cuts means you&apos;ll have something that will wear well for years.  And in a world in which off-the-rack sizing is increasingly problematic (aggressively styled cuts with little sizing leeway result in more frustrated customers), it&apos;s increasingly an option.  There are a few vendors in the space, though I feel it&apos;s still waiting for its true visionary.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>majormajor</author><text>This article doesn&apos;t read like a subtle &quot;the suit is back!&quot; pitch to me. It&apos;s a pretty interesting look at the economics of a couple of different ways of making better-fitting suits.&lt;p&gt;I agree that the interesting changes will come out of the made-to-measure world. Considering the difference in comfort (not to mention look!) that properly-fitting clothing provides, I&apos;d be extremely interested in getting a nice made-to-measure suit if I had the sort of job or social calendar that would give me opportunities to wear it... and while I don&apos;t expect to ever be in the sort of job or circles that would require a suit regularly, I definitely look forward to an economical, quick(ish) way of getting a nice-fitting suit. Last time I bought a suit I had to wait over a month for alterations to be done at the department store anyway, so if someone can come up with a way of reducing made-to-measure turnaround to a month...&lt;p&gt;And then let me gets khakis and less-formal shirts made that way too... I buy a lot more of those than suits.</text></comment>