Casual and Formal Wear are Closer Than You Think

A man called Adolfo started a conversation. About a man called Scott. I replied, he replied, and here is my reply to his.

The background: Scott Schuman (aka The Sartorialist) takes photos for his blog of people in both traditional/formal style and casual/streetwear style. Adolfo thinks this is a shame, as Scott is one of the few people that does. Every other blog seems obsessed with either the one or the other.

This may be true, but I think Adolfo is missing a deeper truth. A single aesthetic informs the whole of Scott’s output, one that perhaps leans towards formal style – an aesthetic that searches out fit, colour and pattern.

I would argue that this aesthetic is as key to casual wear as it is to formal wear. And this is the reason Scott appears to have greater range. Because he recognises this. Most casual/streetwear blogs are not interested in aesthetics. (They are often more concerned with brands and with transient trends.)

This aesthetic is very similar to my own, so I’ve tried to spell it out.

Fit
First, fit. Scott has a thing for cuffs that poke out of a jacket just so (about half an inch). Others on formal wear sites will spend many an hour discussing the merits of a natural shoulder or the new trend for shorter, narrower trousers.

But fit is just as crucial in casual wear. People define themselves by the fit of their jeans, whether baggy and low slung or tight and short. One evokes hip-hop, another punk. When I was a teenager they were all bootcut. Now even the least trendy teenager has them narrow and straight.

And men use fit to express themselves in formal wear just as much as in casual wear. A man consciously wearing high-waisted trousers, perhaps with braces, may be determined to evoke a bygone era in his tailoring ¬– one where no man exposed his shirtsleeves and the bottom, horizontal button on a shirt attached to your trousers.

Colour and pattern
Second and third, colour and pattern. I’ll demonstrate this parallel with a few of Scott’s photos.

Take the man with yellow gloves. Sometimes one wakes up in the morning and feels like putting a small twist on a normal outfit. In formal wear, this may be yellow gloves, or an orange belt. In casual wear it might be those radiation-bright Nike trainers. Which probably need to be balanced a little with dark jeans and an old sweater. Just like the man in this photo, dressed more formally, has balanced his gloves with a dark coat and sombre shoes.

That ‘pop’ of colour is the same in both outfits. They have the one idea, the one aesthetic, in common.

If you feel a little crazier, try more colour or more pattern – like the gentleman in Scott’s photo with the green scarf. More colour or more pattern also needs balance. Here that means strong but unpatterned purple behind patterned green, and a little jolt of handkerchief in harmonious colours.

The handkerchief is key; the handkerchief pulls it together. It’s not hard to think of similar accessories, whether they be scarf, cap or trainers, that would have the same role in a casual outfit.

As a final pièce de resistance, Scott’s photo from last week of the man in the hoodie. It is a beautiful image – beautiful because it is shot well but also because of the harmony of colour. The blue and red of the scarf is bright; the blue and red of his coat and sweater are dull. Both work well with his skin colour, and both accentuate each other.

This image is not about suits or brogues. It is about the aesthetic of dressing well with colour. It applies just as much to formal wear as to casual. Replace the coat with a suit, the sweater with a tie (on a pale blue shirt) and the scarf with a handkerchief. Still a great combination.

Adolfo, I’ll be interested to hear what you think. This is the reason I think The Sartorialist works; it might be why you do too.

Some casual wear blogs seem divorced from formal ones because they spend their time saying “ooo, look at these new trainers from Adidas, I want them”. Some formal wear ones are no less shallow.

The pleasure of dressing is an aesthetic pleasure.

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Designer vs. High Street: My View

Ideally, buying designer clothes should be about design.

Runway shows have a perennial fascination because they showcase (in rapid, often dazzling procession) a series of unique and original designs. They are a flick-book approach to art – glimpses into the mind of a designer with one theme, and perhaps hundreds of preoccupations.

The best designer stores, equally, are fascinating. Glancing through rails, even just taking in the mannequins and their lighting, pose, dress, can be an aesthetic pleasure, akin to any exhibition of design. One walks out the best of them feeling inspired (even if you couldn’t afford anything inside).

But many designer purchases are about three values, only one of which is design. Those other two values are branding and quality.

When making such a purchase, bear in mind which of those three values you are prioritising and why. This will help you decide whether to opt for that designer bag or its high-street equivalent.

Branding
The first value, branding, can be dealt with most easily. Everyone succumbs to it to a greater or lesser extent – the desire to belong to that view of life, that aesthetic, to buy into it and possess a part of it. While this is objectively the least rational value, it would be churlish to condemn it. And without it life would be a little duller. Buy into it if you want, but be conscious what you are doing.

Quality
Buying something for the quality of its workmanship is far more rational. It will last longer, and look smarter for a greater proportion of that time. In the case of classic men’s clothes such as suits and shoes, that quality will mean something lasts for a decade rather than a year.

Designer clothes will be better made than high-street ones. But the difference may not be as large as you think. Many suits, for instance, are made in the same factories for different brands – one buyer told me that Austin Reed, Aquascutum and Gieves & Hawkes suits are all made in the same factory despite representing high street, designer and tailoring in many people’s minds.

Some of those suits are only super 100s or below, and fused rather than canvassed. Designer doesn’t necessarily mean quality. Research the brand and know what you are buying if you want quality – Mulberry bags, for instance, are designer and they are still made in England and will last a lifetime.

Design
Design has value when it’s unique. So buy designer clothes for their design when you can’t find them anywhere else. As with much in this posting, this has an echo in Winston Chesterfield’s thoughts last week – I would pick out his sunglasses example as something that can easily be copied, and so found on the high street. Buying a designer version seems pointless. You are not buying it for design or for quality. It’s all about value number three: branding.

Other examples of pieces that can easily be copied are belts, hats, ties and socks. You may buy a designer version of this for its superior quality, but not for its design. The pieces that are worth buying for their unique design are those that are complicated: suits, dresses, jackets, shoes. They are unlikely to be copied well.

So, in answer to the question of whether to buy high-street or designer clothes, I say: analyse where the value is. Is it in design, in quality or just in branding? Thinking through those three should make the decision easy.

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The Blog’s Third Way

A man called Adolfo recently commented on Permanent Style that “All men’s magazines and blogs are either too conservative/traditional or too modern/fashiony. There is no middle ground.”

It’s easy to sympathise with this view. There is a plethora of blogs out there looking at the latest catwalk shows, giving their views on which looks they like and do not like. This is fabulous (and free) market research for the designers, but the comment from fashion enthusiasts is not necessarily that original, insightful or knowledgeable. At a certain point, it is just like going shopping with a friend who insists on commenting on every outfit he sees.

Equally, some of the conservative/traditional blogs can seem rather nerdy, obsessing over the waist on a certain type of shoe or a vanishing line of Harris tweed. While the lessons concerning fit or materials are useful for anyone, the base knowledge assumed means that those lessons are long since past discussion.

Adolfo’s example of a middle ground is The Sartorialist, of whom I am also a fan. Scott manages to combine both contemporary and classic looks by looking at what people are wearing on the streets. And his photographer’s eye means that the images are both intriguing and attractive.

(The alternative is those sites that exhibit “What I’m wearing today”. You can imagine a situation where these might be fascinating, if it were Tom Ford for example, but unfortunately bloggers rarely come up to that mark. And more importantly, you can’t help feeling that you would have to read a lot of these blogs to get any comprehensive view of men’s style.)

I think the Sartorialist could be improved with more insight and commentary, perhaps along the lines of the conservative/traditional blogs Adolfo refers to. Scott presumably doesn’t have the time to write extensively about each shot every day, (and the actual comments on the site are rarely more than sighs of approbation) but there’s no reason we can’t. This is my first suggestion for combining the two types of blogs Adolfo refers to. Please tell me if anyone else has any suggestions.

As an example, I include this image from The Sartorialist. It is one of my favourites. I think it shows how well and how subtly a plaid jacket can work, with a few gentle echoes between the blue lines in the jacket and the shirt/tie, and between the jacket and its sombre, background trousers.

It has lessons for more casual (perhaps read contemporary) wear as well. For example, an odd, plaid jacket look can go very well with dark jeans. And if you are unsure what to wear under it, remember a blue shirt will always seem the most neutral and casual, and combined with a blue knitted tie it is the perfect background for the jacket. Try this as a background to anything more unusual or fashion-forward you are experimenting with.

Finally, the white pocket square picks up the look well and is a great addition to a outfit when you are already wearing a shirt and tie. Blue would look too conscious. White looks fresh and standard. On the contemporary side, there is always the risk that wearing an odd jacket and a knitted tie can make you look like a history teacher (though I do know some well-dressed history teachers). The handkerchief dispels that suggestion, as it rejects any idea that this combination is about laziness rather than style. A flowering blue/white handkerchief instead of the tie would pull this idea further along.

This analysis could just as easily be done through a more casual, younger example. Perhaps I’ll do this next time. In the meantime I’d be interested to hear what people think of combining traditional and contemporary analysis in this way. Particularly you, Adolfo.

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It Could Have Been So Much Better

Among my peers, Savile Row, its suits and tailors, is a thing of aspiration. It makes the best suits, has dressed the best people and justly carries an air of arrogance. One day, when we have enough money to sensibly spend a lot of it on a very nice suit, that is where we will go, with a certain amount of trepidation. There is a readymade market among British youth there, all with accelerating income and aspirations to luxury that include Huntsman, Poole and the rest.

The tragedy is that the BBC series on Savile Row may have popped this bubble, by trying to lure exactly that youth market.

Monday’s final episode in this series was entitled New Blood, and focused on the need for Savile Row to hire talented young tailors that are willing to stay in one unglamorous career their whole lives, for the love of the job and without much pay (at least to begin with).

Unfortunately, all it did was highlight once again Savile Row Bespoke’s mistaken efforts to brand the street as a whole, to bring together disparate individuals into one marketing exercise. The SRB association is planning to set up an academy to train young tailors. Unfortunately, one tailor further down the Row that is not a member of SRB has the same idea. Or, rather, a slightly different idea: he wants his own academy because he feels the work done on the rest of the Row is not up to scratch.

The two meet, have a reasonably gentlemanly discussion and depart, each refusing the other’s offer. So now any young man (or, increasingly, woman) wanting to be trained by the best has to choose between the Savile Row Academy and Savile Row Bespoke training. Both claim to be superior and to be aiming for the same thing, and will likely offer nothing to the potential tailor that clarifies the situation.

It reminds me of the many language schools that set up in Oxford so they can call themselves The Oxford School of Languages, trying to lure in foreign students who think they are somehow being admitted to Oxford University. Some even set up on Oxford Street with the same intention.

This view of the Row – as confused and unwieldy, amateurish in the extreme – is bemoaned even more by those closely associated with it. As Thomas Mahon says on his excellent blog English Cut, “I never thought I’d see the day that a programme about the business I’ve been involved with all my life could possibly make me cringe so much. It was all very sad and tragic.”

“It appears that Savile Row Bespoke is doing a better job than all the high rents, bad exchange rates and global fashion brands could ever do at eating away at the core of what makes Savile Row a wonderful and unique place.”

It will never puncture the image of Savile Row sufficiently for me. But for others it may well have done. It is a real shame that SRB (credited by this programme and therefore presumably involved) thought a documentary would help spread the Savile Row word, when it has undone anything positive that professional, targeted advertising would have achieved.

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An Interview with Suit Supply

Following on from Permanent Style’s posting on February 1, the following is an interview with Suit Supply staffer Richard Finlay-Newton about the brand’s economies of scale, and how to get value for money in your suit.

Permanent Style: How is Suit Supply able to offer made-to-measure suits more cheaply than other stores?

Finlay-Newton: Suit Supply is a vertically integrated company, so we design, make and sell our products ourselves. Therefore, the best and most direct line to the end customer makes a better price. We don’t have to pay for agent’s, trade fairs etc.

PS: What quality signs, such as fineness of wool or canvassing, should readers look for in suits generally, and how does Suit Supply compare here to other stores?

A suit does not take shape from itself, you need to put something inside a suit to give it form, a structure, the inter-lining. There are many ways to make this structure, most common even in the more expensive suits being a fused construction in which a plastic layer is fused to the outer fabric. We use the old-fashioned technique: a canvas of cotton and horse or camel hair. If you bend these hairs they come back, these hairs have long lasting ‘form memory’ and we use them to give form to a suit. The result is a suit which follows the form of the body, one that does not make you feel locked up, and which will keep its form even through the valeting process.

PS: How much of a suit’s price is attributable to branding and advertising, do you think?

Around 60%

PS: Where do most other brands have their suits made these days?

Quality suit making is still concentrated in a few areas, where we and other brands make our suits. These towns contain the people who have the required skills in their fingers. So we all stick together in a way. The skills don’t migrate as fast as in other more industrialized trades. So we and our competitors still produce a great deal in Italy, but China is also moving up in quality garment making.

PS: Do different brands tend to be made at the same factories and even with the same wools ?

Cloth can be sold from one mill to several companies, with the suit possibly being made at the same factory. The main difference is often the cut of the jacket. Each company will aim to create a shape that sets it apart from its competitor. You may still find the same cloth in different shops at different prices.

PS: What other industry insights can you offer about how suits are made and how to get value-for-money?

The make of a suit is just the starting point. The satisfaction you will get from a suit is decided largely by how it fits you. If the person measuring your suit has got it right you will feel better in the suit, and wear it more often. It is about expertise in making the suit, but just as important in the skills of the people measuring you. You can buy an ill-fitting suit for a lot of money. That is the reason why we focus on just one thing: suits, and do not divert  into casual wear, shoes etc. It enables us give our full attention to the promise we give to every customer a perfect fitting suit.

PS: Does Suit Supply have any plans to extend to the US or any other markets?

The first months of trading have been very successful, so we are going to open more stores in the UK this year. We are also planning to open a store in Milan and Zurich in the next 12 months. The UK is in a way a portal to the US, although suit wise there are some big differences – our orientation is probably more westwards in this regard.

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