Although the suit is historically associated with projecting elegance, authority, and mastery of a profession, those qualities hearken back to the days when suits were prevalent, worn by the Atticus Finches and Don Drapers of the world. How long until we realize the suit — while still used for special occasions and by a shrinking number of traditionalists — has become associated with the opposite? The suit has become a uniform for the powerless.
There are exceptions. Women celebrities have recently donned suits
in glitter and velvet and purple, modernizing
a Marlene Dietrich staple, and the suit is an important component of non-binary clothing trends. Those choices are made to subvert expectations of the suit. But most people who wear suits are men. And they wear them because they have to please someone else, whether it's an employer or Congress. Unless you live on Park Avenue, the suit brings to mind job interviews, junior salespeople, young employees behind the counter at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, hotel clerks, and court appearances.
When you're in control, at least in relative control, from the C-suite down to the long rectangular table in the open-air office, you wear whatever you want, which is almost never a suit. It is the
vest or bomber jacket for men, a blouse or a shell top for women. For people wealthy enough to attend
wine country casual weddings, the male guests (and potentially the groom) can get by with light slacks and a button-down. At this year's Oscars, the male celebrities who garnered the most headlines, like Chadwick Boseman, spurned suits for
outfits that resembled dresses. JPMorgan lightened its dress code to business casual
for most of its 237,000 employees in 2016. Goldman Sachs, the financial firm reputed to "
rule the world," nixed its suit requirement in March.
When you're in control, you wear whatever you want, which is almost never a suit
The numbers alone suggest suits lack the value and influence they once had. The Consumer Price Index for suits in June 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was about 25 percent lower than in June 2000. This descent began well before the Great Recession and during a period in which the CPI for the general apparel market
has declined 4 percent and risen since the financial crisis. The CPI, which measures the price paid by consumers over time, is considered a proxy for inflation, so a CPI decline is the opposite of what would be expected in an economy with high consumer confidence.
Americans are also buying fewer suits. US revenue for men's suits declined to $1.9 billion in 2018 from $2.2 billion in 2013, according to the research firm Euromonitor (revenue for women's suits tumbled in the same timeframe to $402 million from $795 million). The total number of men's suits sold in 2018 was 8.6 million — or about .07 suits per man.
Compare this to the late 1940s. A board member of the National Clothing Manufacturers Association
estimated back then that half a suit was bought per man per year, which would equal roughly 25 million suits. At the average price for a suit at the time, about $50, revenue would have been $1.25 billion. And that's in 1940s money. Accounting for inflation, the market would have been $12.5 billion. And that's for a United States that had half the adult male population the country has now. And — a final and — this board member suggested the industry needed to increase sales to one suit per man per year. The rate of half a suit per man,
he said, "should cause us to hang our heads in shame."
