Clothes Line Saga 005

The $80 suit

Welcome back to Clothes Line Saga, a series devoted to fit pics and associated commentary.

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I wore this on Saturday, October 4th.

My wife I went out to dinner at Verjus to celebrate our ninth half-anniversary. I call it our “half-anniversary” because it’s both the day of our first date (in 2016), and our engagement (in 2021). It’s also almost exactly half a year removed from our wedding anniversary (April 1st). Together, the two dates act as romantic solstices of a sort, biannual landmarks that are never too far off.

As I grow older, I find it important to remain attuned to occasions like these. In the squall of modern life, they are fleeting moments of safe harbor—a chance to sit, and to be with one other, and to enjoy a nice bottle of wine, and a plate of radishes and butter, and an after-dinner chartreuse. An added bonus: you get to wear great clothes.

I used the night as an opportunity to test drive a new suit ahead of fall/winter. Suiting can be a tricky concept for me. On the one hand: I love to wear suits, and I feel like I do it reasonably well. On the other hand, I don’t often have places to wear them. On top of that, the shape of my body tends to fluctuate. For a garment that has been tailored to a specific set of dimensions, this can pose a problem.

At present, I’m in the midst of a modest stretch of resistance training. Over the past five months, I’ve put on ~15 pounds of muscle through a “bulk” phase. I’m pleased with the way my body has changed, but it’s had an impact on the way some of my clothes fit. The sleeves of my O’Connell’s suit, for instance, are much tighter than when I wrote about it in March, and the pockets of the trousers flair, which indicates too tight a fit around the hips.

In the new year, I plan to shift out of the “bulk” phase into a “cut” phase, when I focus on losing weight as opposed to building muscle. This should bring my body and the suit back into alignment, but until then, I just have to make do. I can either wedge myself into an uncomfortable rig tailored for another person’s body, drop four figures on a whole new one, or simply abstain from suiting altogether. None of these are ideal options.

Enter: the $80 suit.

Generally, you get what you pay for with suits (up to a certain point, at least). Low-end suits will typically be machine-made, of inferior material, and/or the result of questionable labor practices. They’re also likely to be aimed at the lowest common stylistic denominator, meaning short jackets, thin lapels, and low-rise, slim-fit trousers: everything you want to avoid. Even if you’re willing to compromise on all these points (and you shouldn’t be), you’re still going to be dropping $500-$800—not an insignificant sum.

If you know what you’re looking for, however, vintage opportunities abound. A couple obvious facts: 1) millions of suits have been made over the past several decades, 2) most people don’t wear them anymore, and 3) they are tailored to the shape of one specific individual. This makes it a buyer’s market. It’s an ironclad law of economics: high supply plus low demand equals low prices.

As soon as I stumbled across the eBay listing for this suit, I knew I was in business. Per the title, the brand is Southwick, a classic American tailoring manufacturer. This alone didn’t make it notable: Southwick is still around these days in a diminished state, churning out lesser versions of the goods it made its name on a hundred years ago.

According to the jacket tag, however, the suit was sold by “The Ascot Shop,” which a little bit of Googling revealed is a classic menswear boutique founded in 1950 in La Jolla, California. The Ascot Shop is still standing today, but they seem to cater primarily to the beach dad business casual crowd. According to their web store, they don’t even stock Southwick. These facts, combined with the style of the jacket—three-roll-two, subtle chalk stripe pattern, healthy length—made it plain the suit was several decades old. If I had to guess, I would date it to sometime between 1988 and 1992, the tail-end of the Gordon Gekko era.

This, to me, is what made it worth copping: they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.

I’m so glad I did. After a bit of work from my tailor, the suit fits (almost) perfectly. The sleeves are plenty wide, the pants break perfectly, and the jacket rest easily across my shoulders: close enough to avoid the dreaded collar gap, but no closer. I could certainly use a little more room in the thigh (mine are quite wide thanks to years of biking), but that’s the kind of compromise you accept with the $80 suit.

While I’m thrilled with the quality/cost ratio, I’m even more pleased with the mindset it allows. Spending so little on a suit allows me to wear it freely, in any context I like. It’s not something to be guarded and fussed over, reserved for the rarest of occasions. I can wear it anytime I like. I can put some miles on it, which will more than make up for any spills or scuffs or imperfections I might attract. Clothes look best when they looks like they’ve been worn.

I completed the look with a few pieces matched the general Wall Street vibe: Tag Heuer sport watch passed down to me by my father, vintage Armani tie (~$5 on eBay), white OCBD. If I were going full Gekko mode, I would’ve swapped the shirt out for a spread collar, but to be honest, I find them distasteful and a bit cocky. Give me the rumpled, quiet charm of a button down collar any day. The more wrinkled the better; this shirt wasn’t even ironed.

Down below, I threw on my Paraboot Michaels, which are finally beginning to break in after about a year. Paraboots are pricey, but they’re built to last a lifetime. With the rest of the ensemble coming so cheap, it felt appropriate to go loud with the shoes. The moc toe and thick rubber sole play against the more elegant footwear you would typically pair with this look, like a loafer. Eye-catching, but not kitschy.

To be sure, this isn’t the be-all end-all of suits. The lapels are a bit flat, robbing the jacket of some the dimensionality you want for in a suit. The stripes on the pocket flaps don’t line up perfectly with the stripes on the body, and the sleeves are maybe a touch short. That’s ok: details like these will only be noticed by the most depraved menswear nerds.

When you’re sitting in a dark restaurant with your sweetie baby by your side, you’ll look plenty fine, and you’ll feel even better.