The last time I tried to buy a suit I came away hot, bothered and empty-handed. I blame myself: body mass and excessive curvature made demands that could not be met by the straight-cut fabrics of high street retailers.
But I needn’t have worried. The suit, you see, is positively uncool these days. Earlier this year 400 jobs went at Brioni, the luxury Italian suit-maker, because of falling sales. And last week its creative director, Justin O’Shea, left after just six months in the job, having been brought in to revive the business.
It’s not only at the high end that the suit is in decline. Relaxed dress codes and increased informality at work can make the suit seem like something from a distant era. And even when suits still are being worn it’s far from certain the wearer will have a tie on to match.
For the average British male – the only gender about which I feel qualified to comment – this crumbling of former certainties is troubling. Few words drive more fear and confusion into the (male) mind than “smart casual”. Having to think about clothing choices only makes the morning routine more problematic.
In The Full Monty, when Gerald, played by Tom Wilkinson, wanted to hide the fact of his redundancy from his wife, he put on his suit and tie and drove off, as if to work. But the steel mill where he had been the foreman had closed. He was suited and booted, as it were.
In February the former prime minister – lovely suits! – sought to make a political as well as a sartorial point against Jeremy Corbyn at prime minister’s questions. When asked what his mother would make of problems in the health service, David Cameron replied: “I think I know what my mother would say. I think she would look across the despatch box and she would say: ‘Put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem.’” The voice of tradition has rarely made itself more plainly heard.
Suits are signifiers of class and status, clearly. But it is not only the upper middle classes who care about such things. Neil Kinnock made a point of always being “properly” turned out in a suit and tie as Labour leader. This business of looking the part is largely what the wearing of a suit is all about.
If you are going to be radical, dress conservatively. Maybe Cameron’s advice to Corbyn was more helpful than it sounded at first.
Michael Ignatieff described his unhappy experiences in Canadian politics in his book Fire and Ashes, which contained a revealing passage about the apparent obligation of political leaders to get expensively suited up. “As you submit to the compromises demanded by public life, your public self begins to alter the person inside,” Ignatieff wrote. “Within a year of entering politics, I had the disoriented feeling of having been taken over by a doppelganger, a strange new persona I could hardly recognise when I looked at myself in the mirror … I had never been so well dressed in my life and had never felt so hollow.”
This is what the suit can do to an innocent intellectual. During his time as Labour leader I always felt, looking at Ed Miliband in his rather impressive suits, that inside there was a guy in a terrible jumper yearning to break out.
So is this the end? No, I suspect the suit will survive. Ultimately, small-c conservatism still rules; even professional service firms that claim to have lightened up will instruct staff to toe the line when meeting clients.
Employees may live in dread of what “the suits” will come up with next. But they know that the wearing of a suit seems to confirm their bosses’ authority. Bosses know it too. That’s why they will cling on to them. “Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all,” said King Lear.
Henceforth, the ultimate act of rebellion may take place when every staff member chooses to turn up in a suit in defiance of enforced informality. Why not wear trousers “with a permanent crease”, as my father used to call them? A cause around which office workers of the world may unite.
