>Suits are made to be able to be tailored to the wearer’s measurements. But modern clothes aren’t. For example, even though there are high, medium, and low rise pants, I can’t adjust their rise to my proportions.
To me it seems like this is really the only point OP have, which seems to have more to do with how modern clothes are produced? (factory, based on some averaged out categories of body type)
Other than that it seems like all the things he say are "better", you can find modern variants that do as well.
And the women's cloth rant is weird. Isn't that... Same for (most common) women's suite too? Pockets being too small is enough of an issue that I know some women just buy men's jeans (smallest size) instead, if their proportions are not too different (hip) from average for men.
Also, I didn't see any defense for neckties. What's good about that?
Even that requires a tailored suit, not an off the rack one. I just can't see the dichotomy the author mentions. Suits are clothes and they can be modern or not just like anything else. The differences are that older clothes were generally made to last longer, and that suits can be tailor made. But suits can be also cheap and low quality, they can be ill fitting, and here it doesn't matter if they're old or modern.
As for comfort, look at clothes you'd wear for relaxing on the couch or for extended periods like a long flight. A suit can be comfortable for a suit but otherwise they're mainly a matter of looks rather than comfort.
Suits generally are pretty comfortable though, other than the shirt and tie which give me something close to claustrophobia. Some of my favorite pants for lounging around the house are suit pants.
After wearing suit and tie for decades, and liking it as a work attire, I can't imagine how a suit can be more comfortable than clothing that doesn't have to follow a strict design so is free to focus on comfort. Like a track suit.
Business suits are limited by the choice of fabric and the specific cut. To make them more comfortable they would have to compromise the design, and the fabric would need to change.
Comfortable clothes usually follow the movement of the body with little to no resistance, either by stretching with the skin (tights, never wore them but I hear they're comfortable) or baggy clothes, usually with synthetic fibers.
You can find casual suits that are basically track suits with a business suit general look but I wouldn't conflate them.
Honestly, I don't mind wool. I've never felt it to be scratchy, but I hate polyester, which I do find irritating. I don't wear suits regularly because I hate collared shirts and I'm not a tophat capitalist, but I've never found them to be uncomfortable.
I don't think you can adjust all of that with suits either. Unless you have them tailor made. But you can also have your jeans tailor made. I was never happy with the state of male trousers, so I had some tailor made. It doesn't have to be a suit.
The same goes for the rest of the arguments. Buttons? Plenty of jeans have buttons. Plenty of suit pants don't.
Do you want pockets? Ever heard of cargo pants?
And jackets can certainly have advantages, but that doesn't have to be a suit jacket. There are other kinds of jackets.
It's fine to like suits if that's what you like, but none of this is unique to suits. Except ties.
The result of this process would vary widely based on what you call "jeans". If it's any denim pants then sure, you can just use the same cut as suit trousers and get well fit "jeans". Some people call "jeans" only pants cut in a fashion similar to Levi's 501. Those don't have darts or pleats so even if a taylor hand stitched such a cut it simply doesn't have as many "knobs" to fit one's legs shape as well as suit trousers.
Same principle applies to any other garment. They are all made from flat pieces of fabric stitched together. The fewer pieces and fewer stitches there are, the harder it is to fit to the body shape.
">Suits are made to be able to be tailored to the wearer’s measurements. But modern clothes aren’t."
It's understandable that modern pre-made clothes have to trade off the number of sizes and fittings. Unlike tailored clothes, economies of production mean they cannot be an ideal fit for everyone.
However, what I find completely inexcusable is that modern pants' pockets are almost inevitably too small, and often even zippers are too short making changing in and out of them awkward. These are rarely an issue with suits.
I'm fed up having my smartphone, keys and coins fall to the floor whenever I sit down. The problem is even worse in vehicles as the seats tilt back further. I've permanently lost smartphones because of shallow pockets.
Unlike clothes' sizes, there is no intrinsic limitation to pocket sizes, so why do we continue tolerate pockets that are not fit for purpose?
It's not only a pants problem, shirts regularly have pockets that are too shallow to take a pen, even the upper pockets of my overalls are not deep enough for a pen let alone a notebook or 6" rule.
Surely I'm not the only person who whinges about this. Why are pocket sizes a problem nowadays when never so decades ago?
No, I have the same problem with pockets. Ear buds love falling out of my pockets in the car.
It's the main reason I mostly wear jeans. The five pocket configuration's vertical orientation holds onto its contents better than the slanted pockets of slacks and chinos.
I would really like some slacks with vertical deep pockets. Jeans get so boring.
Right. My earlier comments are not aimed at jeans, they're pretty much the exception. Their two main pockets being positioned at the front make it difficult for objects to fall out unnoticed.
I'm guessing, but I'd imagine as jeans first became popular in the days of horse riding side pockets really weren't a practical option, the rider's motion would contribute to things sliding out of them.
My complaint is that modern clothes designers have forgotten or stopped implementing good pocket design that was fully solved several centuries ago.
"I would really like some slacks with vertical deep pockets."
So would I, and deep pockets do exist but unfortunately not in mass produced pants that are commonly available (one's regular clothing). I have some army BD fatigues/dungarees with really good side pockets. They're not only deep but they're cut in a sort of a shallow 'P' shape. The P-cut at the bottom forces keys etc. to slide down one's side at 90° to the pocket exit when one is sitting. It's thus almost impossible to accidentally lose something out of them.
The questions are why don't manufacturers just copy this excellent design and why don't more people complain. If people stopped buying pants with shallow pockets the problem would be solved overnight.
I owned several early Nokia phones so I understand your point. Trouble is I've various brands of work pants whose pockets wouldn't even safely hold those Nokias. You'd think more attention would be paid to the depth of pockets in work pants but not so. Thus it's not one wayward manufacturer who is to blame, they're all at it.
My solution is to have my local drycleaning shop that offers an alteration service to deepen the pockets. I shouldn't have to pay extra to get right-sized pockets manufacturers should have provided.
Also adjustments have nothing to do with comfort unless before the adjustments it was a clown suit. You'll look better if it's tailored but it's not more comfortable than a sweat suit. Whoever says a suit is more comfortable I just take as performative in the sense that they really like wearing suits for other reasons and extend that feeling to other attributes.
You have probably never worn a tailored suit. The difference between a good fit and a mediocre fit is in centimeters on the right spots, not the difference between a clown suit and a fitting suit. Tailoring is mainly for fit, not looks. Just the tailoring sessions shows that: about 40 minutes of measurements, and about 10 minutes of choices in wool, in pockets, in model. And to expand on the theme in OP: Super 140 wool is an awesome material on both durability and flexibility. There is a few thousand years of tech just in the wool. (Beat that cotton jeans!)
A tailored suit, but indeed, every tailored piece of clothing will always have the best fit and comfort. That's trivial. Even your sweat suit would benefit from being a tailored sweat suit.
I have non standard measurements and buying trousers has always been a chore (a cm lower shoulder, a 1/2 cm shorter leg, cyclist quads, life influences body). I've now started to use AI to pre-select brands and fits that might suit my sizing. Which is actually just moving somewhat towards at least 'fitted' clothing. The future of adult and sustainable fashion 'should' be made to measure.
> “Tailoring is mainly for fit, not looks. … every tailored piece of clothing will always have the best fit and comfort. That's trivial.”
It isn’t trivial; any time a piece of clothing pinches or pulls that is what makes it uncomfortable, and loose clothing doesn’t do that by definition. That means any kind of shaped or fitted clothing including tailoring can only be less-comfortable than loose clothing and approach being equally-comfortable as an upper limit, getting closer with a more skilled tailor.
That means tailoring is mainly for looks - I.e. the only reason tailored clothes exist at all is because wearing a looks bad; start with a super comfortable ‘bag’ and cinch it as close to your body shape as possible so it doesn’t look like a bag, and looks better, get as close as possible without losing that comfort.
I don’t think looseness is always more comfortable. You need looseness in the right areas which is what tailoring provides.
Maybe it’s cold and the extra airiness is working against you.
Maybe the clothes rustle and rub more when you move.
How do (non-elastic) pants stay up, without some minimal measurement for the waist?
I own some more baggy T-shirts and layering with a sweater feels more uncomfortable because the clothes will fold in places you don’t want them to with a sweater on, which is not a problem for more trim fit clothes.
Why would you take the lowest interpretation of someone's comment? I have worn them, why would I write anything if I hadn't? Just say you disagree, there's no need to assume you're replying to a piece of lumber.
Also you do make it seem like you start from clown suits, the suits I've tailored start already pretty good and go to great. They don't start with all that extra fabric you describe in a way that would make them uncomfortable.
Wasn’t meaning to insult, sorry. Didn’t take the lowest interpretation though (“performative”, “clown suit”). And I didn’t go for the ad hominem about men in sweat suites.
I guess we need the distinction of made vs. made to fit (a suit that is tailored post-production) and made to measure (a tailor-made suite; each piece of cloth size for a unique product). Best fitting is made to measure and that is what I am referring to.
> The future of adult and sustainable fashion 'should' be made to measure.
The future is already here. You can order custom sizes from many designers quite easily on the web, it's just not cheap. Few people are willing spend a few hundred or thousand on every outfit when the same thing can be had for $20 mass-produced.
Huh? I have the problem that suit shirts either squeeze my neck giving me a headache, or have to be comically oversized. Like OP, I think I just have non-standard proportions.
But when my wife made a shirt after my actual measurements as an experiment, it did not squeeze my neck and was very comfortable. I loved that shirt and used it for many years until it fell apart (unfortunately it wasn't made of the finest materials, and I don't have the wife any longer either).
So I'd think adjustments can absolutely help comfort.
Do you buy shirts in S, M, L, XL kind of sizes or do you buy them in neck and sleeve length? I'll buy casual shirts in standard sizes but my dress shirts are all specific measurements, any place that sells suits will probably have a shirt that fits your neck and arm length. You can definitely go further with the measurements (like the bespoke shirt your wife made) but unless your body is really disproportionate (like a distended belly or you're a body builder), neck and sleeves are good enough. Generally, the fatter you are, the thicker your neck is so that's effectively how they gauge your torso size. Sleeve length is proportional to your height so taller equals longer sleeves. Suit jackets use your chest circumference and sleeve length.
You can get a shirt made to measure from https://www.hockerty.com, in your choice of material and at quite a reasonable price. I have a few of them. It's basic construction, not high-end luxury fashion, but it feels really good to have a shirt which fits you exactly.
She's still around, she's just not married to me any longer. And sure, she was pretty cool in many ways, such as teaching herself to make shirts, but all in all I'm better off now :)
Sorry, I misunderstood. For what it's worth, it took me about a year after my divorce until I completely stopped accidentally referring to my ex as my wife in conversation! Old habits, etc.
100% agree. Its a tragedy that most men only wear suits for special occasions. When a suit is your daily driver, you'll get it tailored and set up correctly... its basically like walking around in pajamas in how it feels, but you look way way better than casual clothes.
Sadly I like sunshine so I moved away from places where wearing a suit was normal, to a place where people offer their condolences if you're in a suit (either a wedding or a funeral)
Suits are not practical clothing for daily life, it's just natural it faded away to special occasions, and even there it's only because of tradition, ties are the most dorky-looking accessory if you really think about it without associating suits with looking good by default.
I own tailored suits, Italian dress shoes, tailored shirts, silk ties (both neckties as well as bow ties). I'm writing this from experience, I had a whole 15 years phase of being interested in clothing for men.
You can also look way better with contemporary clothing, designed with beautiful cuts forming interesting silhouettes, just don't buy bad-looking/cheap-looking clothes. Those can also be much more practical for daily use, they can be made with great fabrics (including wool), are usually easier to take care of, and don't make you look like a try-hard with a formal attire in day-to-day situations.
Casual clothes are not just sweatpants, jeans, hoodies, etc. there's a whole world of contemporary clothes that aren't chinos with polos and boat shoes.
Suits have become symbols of power, if you are not trying to look like that but want to look good there are plenty of other options available...
Full length mirror and dressing room. If you want to dress well you need to wear many different combinations and accessorize endlessly to develop your style, and that's hard to do if you are distracted by anything or can't see the whole outfit at a glance.
Why aren’t they practical? A rotating collection seems quite practical and frankly easier to style.
Jacket and pants don’t need any coordination - they already match. Turn the shirt underneath up or down the style meter as you please. Same with pants and socks.
> When a suit is your daily driver, you'll get it tailored and set up correctly.
How far back in time do you have to go for that to be generally true? I'm 70 from South West England and I hardly know anyone who had a tailored suit, almost everyone just bought them off the peg even when I was very young. Even fifty years ago wearing an actual suit to work where I lived was relatively rare too even for people who were more than a generation older; it was something that only people in a few professions did (lawyers, estate agents, some doctors, some academics, etc.).
How is that possible? In my mind in an ideal piece of clothing you can equally do (light) physical activity, or just lay around, and is low maintenance, easy to wash, doesn't wrinkle. A suite the antithesis of this.
I think it’s not black and white. Say you have a well-tailored suit and shirt made from breathable, good fabric with a bit of structure (not some ultra-slick fabric that gets and shows wrinkles easily) and high-waisted trousers as well as good, leather-lined shoes/boots. That whole ensemble can be extremely comfortable, way more breathable than a jeans or a polyamide tracksuit and you can move, walk for miles, work and even lounge in it very well.
I’m generally a work shorts, work boots and black T-Shirt kind of person, but I do enjoy wearing suits occasionally since I’ve discovered that they absolutely don’t have to feel as miserable as the shite I was forced to wear as a teenager. When it’s hot, I specifically wear shirts instead of T-Shirts. Over the years, I’ve replaced most of my boots with stuff that is traditionally constructed. “Old school clothing” can be really nice and comfy.
> Its a tragedy that most men only wear suits for special occasions
What, exactly, has been lost here?
Suits look extremely hot and uncomfortable. I've never worn one. I wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars to have one tailor made to my proportions. I don't like the way they look. Why on earth would I wear a suit?
I live in the southeastern US. It's quite hot here, for quite a lot of the year.
Ever wonder why seersucker is Hollywood shorthand for "small-town Southern lawyer"? It's not just Atticus Finch; that's what people wore before air conditioning was widespread. Seersucker is breathable, cool, and naturally wrinkled in such a way that it doesn't really show. Linen wrinkles more obviously but is far more comfortable in a hot climate than even the best cottons (like seersucker).
I can wear a linen suit and shirt in New Orleans in July and be no less comfortable than I would be in a T-shirt and shorts. I might ditch the coat, but that's it.
If you don't like how they look, well, that's a matter of taste, and de gustibus non est disputandum. But they don't have to be heavy wool.
Wool fabric is amazing for temperature regulation, by the way - just not at the highest temperatures. You could walk to the office when it's 5 °C outside, then sit down at your desk without taking off anything.
Suit is the antithesis of clothes. It's uncomfortable and you need to pay attention 24/7 not to ruin it. Basically the male equivalent of high-heels. The first thing I require from clothes is practicality - I don't want to shit myself every time I step into mud or get sweaty or am cold or whatever.
Reading posts like this makes me painfully aware just how neurodivergent I am.
It took me until... late twenties? to understand that most people _aren't_ feeling physically uncomfortable in anything long sleeved (or with long pant legs), and that they're just more... patient? tolerant than I am?
It just straight up isn't an inconvenience to other people!
I am very, very, very glad I have a career (and live in a climate) that lets me get away with shorts and short sleeves on 99,9% of days.
I have similar sensory issues with long pants and long sleeved shirts. I have avoided wearing a long sleeve shirt nearly entirely (I actually can handle dress shirts somehow) for decades now.
It really sucks. I have similar problems with room temperature. If I'm too hot or sweaty it's extremely difficult to focus on work.
The worst part is that my air temperature tolerance isn't, like, coherent. In the summer I'm far too hot at 72 degrees and have to run the AC more than is reasonable. Then during the winter I am far too cold at 72 degrees. It's very silly. I tend to forget how much this affects me, and delay turning on the heat in the fall for too long, and just kind of struggle for a while without realizing it.
Some unsolicited advice couched as experience that may or may not help you:
I struggled with this off and on for years, and still do if I don't take some specific actions. They aren't a total fix but they help.
Turn off the air handling in your house and open it up at one point in the day, preferably a few hours opposite of the seasonal trend (early morning in the summer and early afternoon in the winter). During this time go take a decently long walk in appropriate clothes. When you come back close back up and set the thermostat to whatever the temperature cycled to.
This tends to work to shift seasons more naturally as well. If its hot outside it will feel cooler inside even if the temp went up a degree, and this compounds all season. The reverse is true in the fall/winter.
If I don't do this I struggle very similarly to you all year.
Lol, I grew up in a place with miserably hot and muggy summers, but I was very self-conscious of my skinny legs because someone made a weird comment one single time, so I almost never wore shorts through all my teenage years.
I eventually got over that, but now I live in a much cooler climate where shorts aren't really expected, even in the warmer seasons, and I'm grateful because I do feel more comfortable with pants (and long sleeves, for that matter).
Different strokes/neuro-eccentricities for different folks!
I myself have got very little problem with fabric on my arms or legs in general. The problem is, of course, temperature. Without any sort of reference to suits that are short sleeved, short legged, and a single layer of fabric, it feels like the article is just way off base. It's great that the author has found something he enjoys. But there are many reasons why others don't share his enthusiasm.
I consider myself "neurotypical", and have been working from home for a while now not getting any younger.
I don't even bother with clothing at all sometimes. It's also nice to shower midday and cook all my own meals. It's very nice to skip daily driving. It's amazing to not be too exhausted keep my home clean.
My point is, don't assume that neurotypical people aren't carrying at least some amount of stress from the things that bother you. It's just clearly a lot less stress.
Do you have sensory issues with specific fabrics as well? I have the same issues with long sleeves and it’s made much worse when it’s polyester. I can tolerate loose long sleeved cotton/linen pants much better.
Anything "scratchy" like real wool is right out immediately, and I can tolerate some knit cotton or linen longsleeves better than other fabrics, but nothing is "comfortable" per se.
I am exactly the same way. This year I had to attend a wedding during the heat wave in Germany (no AC anywhere). It was a sensory nightmare. Other guests seemed to just tank it or even somehow enjoy the weather…
I don’t think I’m Neurodivergent, but I hate long sleeves, too. And short sleeves, I like long sleeve shirts with the cuffs rolled or pushed up to the elbows.
Side-effect of being very tall and outgrowing shirts quickly as a youth.
You’re not neurodivergent, wtf people self diagnose like this as if it were some great discovery about themselves. Here’s another discovery you may not have made yet: we cannot know what others feel inside, even when they claim to tell us… they will just say what they think they should say or you want to hear. Revealing your inner thoughts is extremely difficult for most people, neurodivergent or not. Guessing others feelings about things also.
Yeah you as a random person online probably know more about the inner working of this random person you reply to in some online forum than they do themselves
It's not the point of being right or wrong, it's the point of default expectations of your body not matching factory settings of the environment configured for default expectations of other people.
The autistic community embraces self-diagnosis for lots of reasons (off the top of my head):
- it can be hard for autistic people to even go see a specialist
- lots of autistic people have traumas related to being diagnosed wrongly and receiving bad treatment as a result
Lol this is a pretty wholesome, funny snapshot of an engineer reverse-engineering another field. And all the specific claims are right on, of course! A few elements are missing, though:
1. Suits are nice & durable because they're expensive. After my first "holy shit you're paying me how much??" job I replaced all my college tees with ~$1K in super high quality tees, and the difference is obvious to say the least. I do care for them a bit more (i.e. hangdry them), but still: more comfortable, more durable, more attractive.
2. Suits are tailored because they're expensive. You can get anything tailored! Expensive jeans also receive this benefit by default.
3. There are shitty suits. Presumably this guy has never looked for the very cheapest set at H&M in desparation!
That said, this guy's a smart cookie. And the comment about ties is just joyously relatable
I'd be curious to try a high-quality tee, I may have never worn one. I kind of assumed beyond a certain floor (100% cotton, decent fit) the price is just brand recognition? I end up wearing a lot of tees from events or bands, and I have noticed the Gildan ones do feel a lot better usually, but that's about the only difference I ever feel in tee shirts
Yeah I should clarify that you have to look for ones that differentiate themselves on quality rather than branding. I was lucky enough to get Pistol Lake ones before they went out of business (they invented their own cloth!) but there’s various others you can find I’m sure. Sunspel also makes quite expensive, quite incredible polos — might have plain tees too, not sure.
Definitely don’t, like, get Gucci or Supreme ones ;)
You can also get custom-made jeans and T-shirts. They fit better, you can pick the fabric, you can choose details, plus tailors tend to be fun to chat with. I could spend a whole day browsing the local fabric market chosing fabric for my next shirt.
I find it baffling, but custom-made shirts are cheaper than off-the-shelf.
You can also learn to make your own tshirts. Sewing is a useful skill in general, and tshirts are pretty easy. The neck band is a bit of a challenge, but other than that it's just cutting fabric to a template and sewing pieces together using a sewing machine.
I mean the result might look better with an overlocker, but you can just fold and stich the ends instead. I guess it depends on what you're after. There are maker spaces and other creative hubs where you can easily use sewing machines or overlockers.
Or you can buy one for like ~€350. It's not cheap, but also not insurmountable if you want to go down the route of making your own clothes.
Go to your local Chinatown. You can get custom tailored clothing for a lot less than typical upper middle class branded office/semi-formal wear.
Tailoring is an old old art. Look beyond the flashy Saville Row brands or pseudo "quiet luxury" ones like Brunello that seem to be favored in the Valley.
Any city that has proper suburban shops, strip malls, or Chinatowns. Avoid anything on Main Street. Look for small hole in the wall proprietor operations. This is one of the few times where economies of scale doesn't make things cheaper so avoid any big brands.
Also, watch a YouTube video or two to get a crash course on fabrics. In the states it's labor that's expensive but the fabrics are usually genuine. Alternatively you can go to South East Asia or places like Hong Kong and Japan too but there's a higher likelihood of fraud when it comes to the fabrics. Labor is about a magnitude cheaper though.
Bring your own fabrics if you want authenticity. Fabrics are cheap (relative to the cost of a nice suit on a tech worker's salary)
Another suggestion (not advice, I am hardly a professional when it comes to tailoring) is to commission more cotton clothing first to start so you can get a feel for the process. Suits are nice and all but are an investment of time and money and need constant dry cleaning. Try some custom tailor daily wear instead of H&M for a change (better quality and contributes to your local economy).
I would like to note that suit pants are ridiculously comfortable, and generally a fitted suit is far more comfortable than nearly anything else I wear daily. I don’t understand what crimes society has committed to achieve the outcomes of modern fashion.
Modern fashion dictates simply wearing whatever you are most comfortable in. Most people don't find suits to be comfortable (because they don't put in the effort to get them properly fitted, granted), and thus default to other styles of clothing. But if suits are what you are most comfortable in, then that is what the fashion suggests you must wear. Comfort is the fashion.
It, most certainly, isn't, people wear all sorts of uncomfortable clothes and shoes in the name of fashion. Fashion is all about signalling your status and belonging to this or that social group. Suits are simply associated with people most folks don't want to be associated with.
> people wear all sorts of uncomfortable clothes and shoes in the name of fashion.
Some people do wear all sorts of uncomfortable clothes and shoes, but they do so when they want to reject the fashion. Fashionable people blend into the wall, so naturally some people gravitate towards anti-fashion in order to differentiate themselves from the rest of the heard.
I do agree that it has become fashionable to practice anti-fashion on special occasions, although that isn't the type of fashion we've been talking about.
Certainly some valid points. My main issue with suits is your choice of materials is essentially just wool and polyester. Polyester is something I avoid at all costs, but wool is both expensive and delicate. I don’t want to have to dry clean clothes, it’s inconvenient and generally involves toxic chemicals.
Cotton is nice in that it’s natural, cheap, and durable. In theory there is nothing stopping you having regular pants or jeans custom tailored to your body shape.
Linen is an awful clothing material. I got a linen suit for the summer last year and it’s just such an inflexible material. A light wool has much more give, and with an open weave it does as much as a full suit of clothing can do to keep you cool.
Polyester picks up bad smells a lot more than other fabrics, and it has a tacky shiny look. Acceptable at the gym or while playing sport, but not really anywhere else.
The shiny look is probably not an unchangeable property of the polyester yarn. Right now I've got 100% polyester trousers (uniqlo) on me that are not at all shiny.
I disagree. Yes, the failure mode of buttons is better. But the opening/closing process of zipper is much more convenient/faster than for buttons, and I dress and undress a lot more often than I need to replace a button or zipper.
I own a lot of zip hoodies, some of them > 10 years old, and for none of these the zipper has ever failed. The only zipper that have failed on me are on bags (e.g. messenger bags or similar)
I on the other hand much prefer buttons on jeans. Not because of the failure thing (as others have said: That’s not much of an issue anymore) but because of how Zippers make the fabric behave and shape. A button fly conforms much better to my personal waist/crotch anatomy, especially when sitting.
Undoing a button fly can be even faster than a zipper because you just have to pull in the right direction from the top once (instead of opening one button and then pulling the zipper). Closing is more involved but I can do it with one hand and without thinking actively about it, so it’s fine for me, personally.
Levi's had an advertising campaign in the UK a few decades ago that promoted their "new" button fly, so it's mainly a fashion/marketing thing. Jeans were around before zips were invented, so it's a callback to the original design.
I remember wearing them and certainly they were really stiff and awkward to use when new.
Button Fly jeans were a popular fashion option when I was in high school in 2012. I thought it was hilarious that parents and companies were pushing on teenagers a product who's primary improvement in functionality was "You can rip them open and take them off faster"
I always thought that was sort of the opposite of what they wanted!
When Levi's first made jeans, zippers were not invented yet. You must have bought a pair from one of their original product lines.
Besides, pants with button fly have the distinctive advantage that you will never get your most sensitive skin accidentally pinched between the zippers. :)
I think zippers from 40 years ago were much more likely to fail than they are today. I remember multiple failed jacket zippers when I was a kid, and having to fix them at the worst time.
But I can't think of any zippers, other than ones put under too much stress like an overstuffed bag or suitcase, that have failed recently.
Real backpacks should come equipped with a replacement zipper. In a secret pocket you will remember about it when you will need to remember.
The pain you feel when the zipper of your beloved 20-years old backpack fails is overwhelming. It rips through your soul. And all I want to do in that moment is to remember that I have a secret pocket inside it which keeps my replacement zipper. The feeling of having it there ready for me to fix my brother in arms will also give me an extra 20 years of good life. Small things. Matter. So much.
I much prefer the "dry-bag" style of backpacks that don't use zips (maybe for a small front pocket). I've previously cycled with many a brand of "waterproof" rucksacks and they always seemed to let in water through the zip in a heavy downpour. With my current rucksack, the top rolls down and then buckles together to form an airtight seal and that is absolutely waterproof and the contents would survive being thrown into a river. It's also extremely robust as there's nothing to go wrong apart from the material itself becoming worn through (not happened after years of heavy use).
A well designed set of buttons is much faster to open than a zipper, and about as fast to close. I've got a number of jeans with button flies where opening them is a single handed smooth motion. I've unfortunately also got a number where it's a real fight for each individual button.
I also love my hoodies, but zippers do get stuck every now and then if there’s anything on the way or if you accidentally zip them without locking the bottom thingy. So I’d prefer some sort of hoodie with 4-6 big buttons that I think I’ve seen on the street but not in stores.
Suits, neckties etc are decorations to project status, they are not functional, IMO. Same with shoes.
They'll fade away as wigs, top hats and bowler hats have. I don't recall seeing anyone in a suit in any of WWDC or Google etc events. I do like me a loose "sports jacket" once in while, but mainly for pockets.
OTOH, my wife likes to see me in a suit... "you're so handsome".
> Suits, neckties etc are decorations to project status, they are not functional, IMO. Same with shoes.
The function of suits is to flatter the imperfect human body, by adding structure and bulk in places like the shoulder, to slim the waist, and basically make the typical male look like a V. The necktie adds visual interest, basically an arrow pointing to your face and not the rest of your body. The wig hides an obvious indicator of aging. Hats were very useful when people spent a lot more time outside.
I don't know of many who think shoes aren't functional, other than the most diehard barefoot advocates.
You can think that appearance isn't functional, but tons of studies show that people do judge each other on appearances. Projecting status is the function of clothes, suits just occupy a rung above what is currently popular and what people usually want to project. People wear jeans all the time even though they don't work in the trades.
People say that your clothes are your expression. But actually it its other way around. You are an expression by your clothes. Your clothing tells you how to walk, behave and talk. You find yourself acting as a different person when you change your clothing.
For me wearing a suit is the worst in terms of clothing. One reason is the buttons. I hate wearing something with buttons. Just why. Instead I will just wear a white T-shirt. and then the jacket also has silly buttons. I just want single color, no writing, no button, no zippers, flexible tops. Also looks best in my personal opinion. Suits look unnecessarily complicated. I am aware that this may be on the scale, thanks.
Well-tailored suits also make you look sharp af.
The day I got the most compliments for my clothes was when I was wearing a suit for my college farewell and smoking (no, it's not a cool habit, I'm just an addict) at a tea stall.
Do you ever "dress up" in anything but a suit? Color coordination and properly matching all the pieces of clothing, shoes, and accessories are the most basic of basics but very few people do them.
In many places being a bureaucrat is exactly the impression you will make, wearing a suit. Depends on the individual, whether they want that. As an engineer I wouldn't want that.
Fair enough. Though there must be some sort of universality in what people find attractive in men. Some lingering evolutionary behaviour (not necessarily suits), no?
You would be very surprised at how well a good summer suit can breathe. If you tell your tailor that you need a suit that you can wear outside in the summer, they absolutely will point in the right direction with regards to material and fit.
I wear shorts and a t-shirt about 360 days a year. Long sleeves and pants are reserved for weddings, funerals and avoiding poison ivy and insect bites.
I find there is no clothing more uncomfortable than jeans. I simply don’t get their appeal. Washing makes them lose color, their material is rough. Maybe a good choice for workers, but not for wearing them every day. Alternative trouser choices (including those of suits) look better, are usually more comfortable and, at least for me, are good for years.
That said, the other issue of mothern clothing: sneakers… sure there are some high end ones that look amazing. But most of the time they just look cheap. The trend of making the soles white means you almost always look like wearing dirty shoes, as those rubber soles are almost impossible to whiten up again.
Compare that to a good goodyear welted shoe: if the leather is good, you can wear them for a decade and just let the soles be replaced every few years. Leather shoes are not too comfortable in the first two weeks of wearing them, but with movement the leather softens and adapts to you. Even paying hundreds for them is ok: you’ll rarely have to replace them.
Jeans are the weirdest default style, a throwback to when they were a symbol of the US's cultural domination. They're often designed to project an image of hard work and use that very few of us do today. They are one of the few pieces of clothing that we intentionally buy pre-damaged with fades, rips, and holes since it skips over the actual hard work we would need to do to achieve those fades, rips, and holes.
In modern times, there are better options than jeans for almost all work tasks, and modern jeans are usually not designed for work as they're cut too slim and made with spandex. Jeans are basically a costume.
What's stopping you? I know it might seem a flippant question but I mean it seriously.
Such clothing, or at least a plausible copy, would be much cheaper now than it was then. I don't do the kingly robe thing but I do wear colourful clothes almost every day and people love it. I was stopped in the street yesterday by a woman who wanted to take my picture.
You are probably grossly overestimating the cost of custom-made clothing if you're hesitant about it while working in tech. Especially if you're buying Turkish. Have you seen the Lira lately? As an American, it's like a 2-3x buying power difference.
Fancy robe at home (union said no to RTO gelul, camera off because I don't want to explain the fancy robe), mid suit to the office once in two weeks to prevent the card from being blocked, a normie shirt for the calls when the camera is better to be on.
After writing this I wondered myself how sick would it be to be able to walk around in robes or togas. There must be a reason that kind of clothing has had so much success.
There's a reason people stopped wearing them: toilets. Robes are fine when you can pop a squat and drop a deuce on the roadside, but are a hassle when you have sit down.
Finding clothes that don't suck has become increasingly difficult. I have a hard time believing that some of this isn't on purpose. It's one thing to use cheap materials and labor. It's another to persistently get the geometry of the human form this wrong this often. Even the obesity crisis does not explain what I am seeing on the shelves at Walmart and Academy.
The hallmark for me are men's shorts. I have to go into obscure athletic retailers to find something that isn't obviously designed to slow me down and antagonize me. Adidas & friends stopped making things that fit correctly 3-4 years ago. I happily pay $100+ for a pair of shorts that don't suck in 2026.
Slowly but surely I think modern mass manufacturing is going to move towards personalised mass manufacture. I think in the meantime the clothes industry needs to do a better job of sizing, that is providing more detailed measurements so they can be selected better. At some point I ought to be able to buy a pair of trousers where I have defined more than just waist and length and especially true for tops based on chest or generic sizing. We can do this a lot better, its not intrinsic to suits they are just worn enough that bespoke services exist in quantity.
It sounds like I would like more personalised but I would like to know how you imagine it working.
Years ago the a custom shoe maker opened with a laser scan of the feet in their ‘shop’ (no products) and then choosing shoes online that they made to fit. They couldn’t fit my feet (I don’t know why). They no longer exist as a company.
I had some shirts from an online custom fit shirt maker, send your measurements and they make shirts. Taking my own measurements without the skill of a tailor is hard and the results were okay-ish but not great. Doubtless if I had kept doing it I would have improved - at great expense and waste.
I know someone who buys several pairs of the same jeans online at once, expecting that “the same” measurements will vary a lot because mass-manufacture of clothes doesn’t do fine tolerances, and has the intention to send most of them back. (And I stress this isn’t buying multiple sizes to choose the best, it’s buying multiple same-size expecting they will actually be noticeably different fits).
I can’t see that industry turning into significantly better ‘custom’ while still being ‘mass’.
The problem is that mass-produced clothing is not really machine-manufactured, it's assembly-lined and streamlined but most of the work is done by rooms of women with sewing machines (try designing a shirt or pants that can be 100% machine made). We can automate parts like the pattern cutting but the whole system is set up for 1 big order and there's no existing logistics chain to handle 1000 individual orders in many different styles.
I never understood the argument of "fashion over function" with regard to pockets on women's clothes. Among other things (protecting from elements and so on), aethetics is also a function of clothing.
I don't have pockets on most of my dresses (or I have tiny pockets on jeans, pants, etc) not because there are no dresses with pockets (there are a lot and I do own some of those) but because they're often ugly and and I don't want to wear ugly clothes. Pockets distort the silhuette and don't hold shape well with ton of materials such as silk or thin cotton.
I’d be interested in a traditional suit, but with a lot of extra give for mobility and cooling engineered in for active play. Think performing on stage under heavy lights or playing sports.
Or am I woefully uninformed about suits and this is already a common option?
The suits they make for bodyguards often have hidden stretch panels for greater mobility.
In reality, the sport coat was originally designed for equestrian sports. Modern fashion has turned the sporty features into aesthetic features. A equestrian wouldn't buy a normal sport coat and someone looking for a nice jacket to wear to brunch wouldn't buy a polo jacket.
This slightly resembles what I'd buy as a sport coat but the cut is a bit different because this coat is actually intended for horseback riding whereas my sport coat is cut for general comfort.
I think suit trousers are more comfortable than jeans. It’s like wearing pyjamas.
Buttoned up shirts are superior to t-shirts. You can open up extra buttons for ventilation. You can roll your sleeves up and down. There is often an extra front pocket. The collar last longer and it can even be repaired.
Maybe you. I sweat a lot and if I'm wearing polyester, I stink so much even I can't bear it. I would need at least three suits a week and they would need to be cleaned each week. Tossing cheap cotton clothes into washer every week is much easier and I always wear zip-up hoodies when it's cold, so it's easier to thermoregulate.
Maybe it doesn't work if you sweat a lot, but undershirt and a shirt should absorb most of it. Or you actually get three suits and dry wash them each week if it's important.
(not the GP) Wearing more will make the sweating worse though. It helps up to some degree, but the soaking capacity of undershirt and shirt is not infinite. Not even talking about the discomfort of sweating even more due to wearing more.
So that brings with it one of the following: (1) Be very careful, to an uncomfortable degree, when wearing a suit, or (2) run around in a dirty suit for a while.
I have a friend in his 30s that always wears a suit, to work, to the club, to hanging with friends. He is one of the more successful people I know as far as both quick career climbing and getting phone numbers of women he approaches.
Almost every suit worth paying good money for uses a fine type of wool for the outer fabric. Wool has advanced a lot over the years but has always been breathable, odor-resistant and not terrible in the rain. (Not as good as a good synthetic blend, which is very modern relative to the suit, but it won't get heavy and take forever to dry like cotton does or hotbox you like pure poly will.)
I've tailored t-shirts before I discovered a brand called 2tall which fits well enough.
I wore suits for the first 30 years of my life, but I can't stand them and they're terrible in warmer climates, I'm never wearing shorts with a suit. And that's part of it beyond the suitability (pun intended); there are unsaid overtones about wearing a suit that imply formality, status, etc. that I just do not want in my life.
> Even a with scratch built tailored suit, the trousers would wear through though.
And this is the ultimate downfall of a suit. When jeans and t-shirts start to show wear then they transition from street clothes to work clothes and continue to live a useful life. As for suits, well, having a tie dangling around machinery isn't the best combo. Not even during peak suit did people wear them in the field.
I’ll absolutely reuse a worn out tailored pair of pants made from good fabric for working or hanging around. I don’t wear business-powersuits, though and that makes a difference for that kind of re-use, I think.
Depending on what you mean by “suit” exactly, people have absolutely worn them in the field for a long time and some still do. British farmers in some thick, hard-wearing tweed or felted fabric trousers, Wellington/work boots, a work shirt and depending on the temperature a more or less suit-like jacket are sort of a cliché, for example. I’m not really arguing against your point, though - just saying that it’s a bit of a continuum and there are many things between the completely impractical tie-dangling machine and jeans+t-shirt.
Very subjective, esp the part about woman's clothing. Yes, they don't have pockets, but honestly I can't stand having a lot of stuff in pockets. The tacticle sensation of stuff in pockets bothers me. Would much rather just have it all in a cute handbag. Grab the bag and go. No need to fill and unfill pockets. Better. Again, it's subjective.
My life quality became so much better when I discovered loose / yoga pants. Your sizes change week to week a bit in a way that it counts, and you get into random body positions in which things get tight without you immediately noticing. No clothing should have buttons on it.
A suit is the antithesis of good clothing. Its only appeal is the socially constructed notion that it looks "good".
“ Even if I feel physically more comfortable in suits, and they are functionally better, I won’t use them when it’s not needed. The only reason is that it’d be socially awkward.”
If you’re an Ashkenazi orthodox Jew, it’s the opposite. Wearing suits every day is the norm. Along with a hat in some denominations.
(In 1930s it was also the norm for many men to do both.)
But suits are very modern clothing; what we consider normal black suit is very much 20th century phenomenon, the uniform of a modern business man. So the dichotomy of "modern clothing" vs "suits" seems very off to me.
Wear whatever the fuck you want, and don't judge people for what they wear. It's that simple (barring a few exceptions around safety and whatnot).
You can get clothes adjusted/altered, even cheap store bought ones. I often have to get new jeans altered because my legs are chonkier than their length justifies. Some stores still have people on site who can make alterations for you. Some don't, but it's easy (at least in my town) to find little shops that do alterations/mending.
> Everyone wears street/modern fashion, and I don’t want to really go to a friends house in suit and tie. It sucks but that is the way things are.
Just wear the suit and tie if you want to. This is such a non-issue.
If I see a person with a generic arm tattoo, hoodie with skateboard logo, and sweat pants, it express the same amount of uniformity as a person in a bad off-the-rack suit with a boring tie.
Only if you're exceptionally lazy with it. Sure, everybody's got to have a black suit for winter weddings and funerals, but you've got a lot more freedom with your summer suit. Whole range of shirt colors, neckwear is a whole world of fashion choices, etc.
that's like saying everyone should just eat porridge, after all there are so many different combinations of ingredients you can put in it! why would you ever want to eat anything else!
I don’t like ironing, for me, it’s a waste of time. And I like to be able to trip into brambles. I get suits for special occasions but not as a daily driver. Too much maintenance and upkeep. You can tailor anything to your tastes!
Another option is just paying for a laundry service. It's really not that expensive (think <$20 a week, in one of the highest cost of living areas in the world), and your clothes end up looking much better than the alternatives. I got into it because I fucking loathe folding clothing.
Author here. Women clothing is another whole beast. Not sure if it’s due to fashion or historical reasons but convenience is the last priority in women’s fashion.
I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago and the bride’s dress had pockets. It may have been the least important time in her life to have them, but it had them.
People had to wear a suit and wanted it to be as cheap as possible, which led to a race to the bottom in suit quality. In the end we had fused jackets and synthetic fabrics which made you sweat with people in turn not even bothering to get cuffs and hems adjusted. Absolutely horrible. This is why casual took over.
Maybe it's time for us to recognize that a good suit serves you for years and decades and as such can cost a few hundred bucks.
And despite the little supply due to classical menswear being irrelevant today, there are also incredible deals to be found at goodwills and the like.
If you're comparing good jeans and a good t shirt then not In my experience. Likewise you can also buy a crappy suit for not a lot of money. I think the core point stands that a suit gives pretty good bang for your buck now and hasn't been enshittified as much as casual clothing is.
TLDR: I have unusual extremities to torso ratio hence I find custom fitted suits more comfortable. Some nonsense about button and pockets that are not exclusive to suits.
Why is this on HN to start with and how the hell did it get to the front page?
Gloom weather season coming to the continent, everybody needs a good excuse to fly to their tailoring destination of choice, get a suit tailored and visit some temples. Or whatever you do there.
>Suits are made to be able to be tailored to the wearer’s measurements. But modern clothes aren’t. For example, even though there are high, medium, and low rise pants, I can’t adjust their rise to my proportions.
To me it seems like this is really the only point OP have, which seems to have more to do with how modern clothes are produced? (factory, based on some averaged out categories of body type)
Other than that it seems like all the things he say are "better", you can find modern variants that do as well.
And the women's cloth rant is weird. Isn't that... Same for (most common) women's suite too? Pockets being too small is enough of an issue that I know some women just buy men's jeans (smallest size) instead, if their proportions are not too different (hip) from average for men.
Also, I didn't see any defense for neckties. What's good about that?
Even that requires a tailored suit, not an off the rack one. I just can't see the dichotomy the author mentions. Suits are clothes and they can be modern or not just like anything else. The differences are that older clothes were generally made to last longer, and that suits can be tailor made. But suits can be also cheap and low quality, they can be ill fitting, and here it doesn't matter if they're old or modern.
As for comfort, look at clothes you'd wear for relaxing on the couch or for extended periods like a long flight. A suit can be comfortable for a suit but otherwise they're mainly a matter of looks rather than comfort.
Suits generally are pretty comfortable though, other than the shirt and tie which give me something close to claustrophobia. Some of my favorite pants for lounging around the house are suit pants.
After wearing suit and tie for decades, and liking it as a work attire, I can't imagine how a suit can be more comfortable than clothing that doesn't have to follow a strict design so is free to focus on comfort. Like a track suit.
Business suits are limited by the choice of fabric and the specific cut. To make them more comfortable they would have to compromise the design, and the fabric would need to change.
Comfortable clothes usually follow the movement of the body with little to no resistance, either by stretching with the skin (tights, never wore them but I hear they're comfortable) or baggy clothes, usually with synthetic fibers.
You can find casual suits that are basically track suits with a business suit general look but I wouldn't conflate them.
Honestly, I don't mind wool. I've never felt it to be scratchy, but I hate polyester, which I do find irritating. I don't wear suits regularly because I hate collared shirts and I'm not a tophat capitalist, but I've never found them to be uncomfortable.
I don't think you can adjust all of that with suits either. Unless you have them tailor made. But you can also have your jeans tailor made. I was never happy with the state of male trousers, so I had some tailor made. It doesn't have to be a suit.
The same goes for the rest of the arguments. Buttons? Plenty of jeans have buttons. Plenty of suit pants don't.
Do you want pockets? Ever heard of cargo pants?
And jackets can certainly have advantages, but that doesn't have to be a suit jacket. There are other kinds of jackets.
It's fine to like suits if that's what you like, but none of this is unique to suits. Except ties.
>But you can also have your jeans tailor made.
The result of this process would vary widely based on what you call "jeans". If it's any denim pants then sure, you can just use the same cut as suit trousers and get well fit "jeans". Some people call "jeans" only pants cut in a fashion similar to Levi's 501. Those don't have darts or pleats so even if a taylor hand stitched such a cut it simply doesn't have as many "knobs" to fit one's legs shape as well as suit trousers.
Same principle applies to any other garment. They are all made from flat pieces of fabric stitched together. The fewer pieces and fewer stitches there are, the harder it is to fit to the body shape.
Fair point. Pockets in suits are the most useful though. Easy to access and don’t drag my pants down when using them.
">Suits are made to be able to be tailored to the wearer’s measurements. But modern clothes aren’t."
It's understandable that modern pre-made clothes have to trade off the number of sizes and fittings. Unlike tailored clothes, economies of production mean they cannot be an ideal fit for everyone.
However, what I find completely inexcusable is that modern pants' pockets are almost inevitably too small, and often even zippers are too short making changing in and out of them awkward. These are rarely an issue with suits.
I'm fed up having my smartphone, keys and coins fall to the floor whenever I sit down. The problem is even worse in vehicles as the seats tilt back further. I've permanently lost smartphones because of shallow pockets.
Unlike clothes' sizes, there is no intrinsic limitation to pocket sizes, so why do we continue tolerate pockets that are not fit for purpose?
It's not only a pants problem, shirts regularly have pockets that are too shallow to take a pen, even the upper pockets of my overalls are not deep enough for a pen let alone a notebook or 6" rule.
Surely I'm not the only person who whinges about this. Why are pocket sizes a problem nowadays when never so decades ago?
No, I have the same problem with pockets. Ear buds love falling out of my pockets in the car.
It's the main reason I mostly wear jeans. The five pocket configuration's vertical orientation holds onto its contents better than the slanted pockets of slacks and chinos.
I would really like some slacks with vertical deep pockets. Jeans get so boring.
Right. My earlier comments are not aimed at jeans, they're pretty much the exception. Their two main pockets being positioned at the front make it difficult for objects to fall out unnoticed.
I'm guessing, but I'd imagine as jeans first became popular in the days of horse riding side pockets really weren't a practical option, the rider's motion would contribute to things sliding out of them.
My complaint is that modern clothes designers have forgotten or stopped implementing good pocket design that was fully solved several centuries ago.
"I would really like some slacks with vertical deep pockets."
So would I, and deep pockets do exist but unfortunately not in mass produced pants that are commonly available (one's regular clothing). I have some army BD fatigues/dungarees with really good side pockets. They're not only deep but they're cut in a sort of a shallow 'P' shape. The P-cut at the bottom forces keys etc. to slide down one's side at 90° to the pocket exit when one is sitting. It's thus almost impossible to accidentally lose something out of them.
The questions are why don't manufacturers just copy this excellent design and why don't more people complain. If people stopped buying pants with shallow pockets the problem would be solved overnight.
This is just as much a phone problem as it is a pocket problem. I had no issue fitting a nokia or early smartphone in my pockets.
I owned several early Nokia phones so I understand your point. Trouble is I've various brands of work pants whose pockets wouldn't even safely hold those Nokias. You'd think more attention would be paid to the depth of pockets in work pants but not so. Thus it's not one wayward manufacturer who is to blame, they're all at it.
My solution is to have my local drycleaning shop that offers an alteration service to deepen the pockets. I shouldn't have to pay extra to get right-sized pockets manufacturers should have provided.
> I didn't see any defense for neckties
I've told my wife I'll wear one to my funeral.
Yeah sorry the womens clothes rant was a bit of venting off while speaking about clothing.
Regarding neck ties this was my only comment:
> Note: ties feel a bit useless but at least they hide my belly when movement slightly opens the shirt.
Also adjustments have nothing to do with comfort unless before the adjustments it was a clown suit. You'll look better if it's tailored but it's not more comfortable than a sweat suit. Whoever says a suit is more comfortable I just take as performative in the sense that they really like wearing suits for other reasons and extend that feeling to other attributes.
You have probably never worn a tailored suit. The difference between a good fit and a mediocre fit is in centimeters on the right spots, not the difference between a clown suit and a fitting suit. Tailoring is mainly for fit, not looks. Just the tailoring sessions shows that: about 40 minutes of measurements, and about 10 minutes of choices in wool, in pockets, in model. And to expand on the theme in OP: Super 140 wool is an awesome material on both durability and flexibility. There is a few thousand years of tech just in the wool. (Beat that cotton jeans!)
A tailored suit, but indeed, every tailored piece of clothing will always have the best fit and comfort. That's trivial. Even your sweat suit would benefit from being a tailored sweat suit.
I have non standard measurements and buying trousers has always been a chore (a cm lower shoulder, a 1/2 cm shorter leg, cyclist quads, life influences body). I've now started to use AI to pre-select brands and fits that might suit my sizing. Which is actually just moving somewhat towards at least 'fitted' clothing. The future of adult and sustainable fashion 'should' be made to measure.
> “Tailoring is mainly for fit, not looks. … every tailored piece of clothing will always have the best fit and comfort. That's trivial.”
It isn’t trivial; any time a piece of clothing pinches or pulls that is what makes it uncomfortable, and loose clothing doesn’t do that by definition. That means any kind of shaped or fitted clothing including tailoring can only be less-comfortable than loose clothing and approach being equally-comfortable as an upper limit, getting closer with a more skilled tailor.
That means tailoring is mainly for looks - I.e. the only reason tailored clothes exist at all is because wearing a looks bad; start with a super comfortable ‘bag’ and cinch it as close to your body shape as possible so it doesn’t look like a bag, and looks better, get as close as possible without losing that comfort.
I don’t think looseness is always more comfortable. You need looseness in the right areas which is what tailoring provides.
Maybe it’s cold and the extra airiness is working against you.
Maybe the clothes rustle and rub more when you move.
How do (non-elastic) pants stay up, without some minimal measurement for the waist?
I own some more baggy T-shirts and layering with a sweater feels more uncomfortable because the clothes will fold in places you don’t want them to with a sweater on, which is not a problem for more trim fit clothes.
Why would you take the lowest interpretation of someone's comment? I have worn them, why would I write anything if I hadn't? Just say you disagree, there's no need to assume you're replying to a piece of lumber.
Also you do make it seem like you start from clown suits, the suits I've tailored start already pretty good and go to great. They don't start with all that extra fabric you describe in a way that would make them uncomfortable.
Wasn’t meaning to insult, sorry. Didn’t take the lowest interpretation though (“performative”, “clown suit”). And I didn’t go for the ad hominem about men in sweat suites.
I guess we need the distinction of made vs. made to fit (a suit that is tailored post-production) and made to measure (a tailor-made suite; each piece of cloth size for a unique product). Best fitting is made to measure and that is what I am referring to.
> The future of adult and sustainable fashion 'should' be made to measure.
The future is already here. You can order custom sizes from many designers quite easily on the web, it's just not cheap. Few people are willing spend a few hundred or thousand on every outfit when the same thing can be had for $20 mass-produced.
Huh? I have the problem that suit shirts either squeeze my neck giving me a headache, or have to be comically oversized. Like OP, I think I just have non-standard proportions.
But when my wife made a shirt after my actual measurements as an experiment, it did not squeeze my neck and was very comfortable. I loved that shirt and used it for many years until it fell apart (unfortunately it wasn't made of the finest materials, and I don't have the wife any longer either).
So I'd think adjustments can absolutely help comfort.
Do you buy shirts in S, M, L, XL kind of sizes or do you buy them in neck and sleeve length? I'll buy casual shirts in standard sizes but my dress shirts are all specific measurements, any place that sells suits will probably have a shirt that fits your neck and arm length. You can definitely go further with the measurements (like the bespoke shirt your wife made) but unless your body is really disproportionate (like a distended belly or you're a body builder), neck and sleeves are good enough. Generally, the fatter you are, the thicker your neck is so that's effectively how they gauge your torso size. Sleeve length is proportional to your height so taller equals longer sleeves. Suit jackets use your chest circumference and sleeve length.
You can get a shirt made to measure from https://www.hockerty.com, in your choice of material and at quite a reasonable price. I have a few of them. It's basic construction, not high-end luxury fashion, but it feels really good to have a shirt which fits you exactly.
Sorry for your loss, your wife sounds like she was an amazing woman.
She's still around, she's just not married to me any longer. And sure, she was pretty cool in many ways, such as teaching herself to make shirts, but all in all I'm better off now :)
Sorry, I misunderstood. For what it's worth, it took me about a year after my divorce until I completely stopped accidentally referring to my ex as my wife in conversation! Old habits, etc.
100% agree. Its a tragedy that most men only wear suits for special occasions. When a suit is your daily driver, you'll get it tailored and set up correctly... its basically like walking around in pajamas in how it feels, but you look way way better than casual clothes. Sadly I like sunshine so I moved away from places where wearing a suit was normal, to a place where people offer their condolences if you're in a suit (either a wedding or a funeral)
Suits are not practical clothing for daily life, it's just natural it faded away to special occasions, and even there it's only because of tradition, ties are the most dorky-looking accessory if you really think about it without associating suits with looking good by default.
I own tailored suits, Italian dress shoes, tailored shirts, silk ties (both neckties as well as bow ties). I'm writing this from experience, I had a whole 15 years phase of being interested in clothing for men.
You can also look way better with contemporary clothing, designed with beautiful cuts forming interesting silhouettes, just don't buy bad-looking/cheap-looking clothes. Those can also be much more practical for daily use, they can be made with great fabrics (including wool), are usually easier to take care of, and don't make you look like a try-hard with a formal attire in day-to-day situations.
Casual clothes are not just sweatpants, jeans, hoodies, etc. there's a whole world of contemporary clothes that aren't chinos with polos and boat shoes.
Suits have become symbols of power, if you are not trying to look like that but want to look good there are plenty of other options available...
>contemporary clothing, designed with beautiful cuts forming interesting silhouettes,
as someone with a recent interest in this, do you have any pointers?
Full length mirror and dressing room. If you want to dress well you need to wear many different combinations and accessorize endlessly to develop your style, and that's hard to do if you are distracted by anything or can't see the whole outfit at a glance.
Why aren’t they practical? A rotating collection seems quite practical and frankly easier to style.
Jacket and pants don’t need any coordination - they already match. Turn the shirt underneath up or down the style meter as you please. Same with pants and socks.
> When a suit is your daily driver, you'll get it tailored and set up correctly.
How far back in time do you have to go for that to be generally true? I'm 70 from South West England and I hardly know anyone who had a tailored suit, almost everyone just bought them off the peg even when I was very young. Even fifty years ago wearing an actual suit to work where I lived was relatively rare too even for people who were more than a generation older; it was something that only people in a few professions did (lawyers, estate agents, some doctors, some academics, etc.).
For me it was 2014... so pre-Covid? And you can have a suit "bought off the peg" and have those tailored. Its usually like $100
How is that possible? In my mind in an ideal piece of clothing you can equally do (light) physical activity, or just lay around, and is low maintenance, easy to wash, doesn't wrinkle. A suite the antithesis of this.
I think it’s not black and white. Say you have a well-tailored suit and shirt made from breathable, good fabric with a bit of structure (not some ultra-slick fabric that gets and shows wrinkles easily) and high-waisted trousers as well as good, leather-lined shoes/boots. That whole ensemble can be extremely comfortable, way more breathable than a jeans or a polyamide tracksuit and you can move, walk for miles, work and even lounge in it very well.
I’m generally a work shorts, work boots and black T-Shirt kind of person, but I do enjoy wearing suits occasionally since I’ve discovered that they absolutely don’t have to feel as miserable as the shite I was forced to wear as a teenager. When it’s hot, I specifically wear shirts instead of T-Shirts. Over the years, I’ve replaced most of my boots with stuff that is traditionally constructed. “Old school clothing” can be really nice and comfy.
It's possible! Like a suit John Wick is wearing. They are actually doing stunts in suits.
Yes, but are they ballistic material? Can they protect the wearer against small arms fire just like they do in the John Wick movie?
I'm sure stunts are done in suits not made with ballistic material!
> Its a tragedy that most men only wear suits for special occasions
What, exactly, has been lost here?
Suits look extremely hot and uncomfortable. I've never worn one. I wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars to have one tailor made to my proportions. I don't like the way they look. Why on earth would I wear a suit?
> look extremely hot and uncomfortable
> I've never worn one
I live in the southeastern US. It's quite hot here, for quite a lot of the year.
Ever wonder why seersucker is Hollywood shorthand for "small-town Southern lawyer"? It's not just Atticus Finch; that's what people wore before air conditioning was widespread. Seersucker is breathable, cool, and naturally wrinkled in such a way that it doesn't really show. Linen wrinkles more obviously but is far more comfortable in a hot climate than even the best cottons (like seersucker).
I can wear a linen suit and shirt in New Orleans in July and be no less comfortable than I would be in a T-shirt and shorts. I might ditch the coat, but that's it.
If you don't like how they look, well, that's a matter of taste, and de gustibus non est disputandum. But they don't have to be heavy wool.
Wool fabric is amazing for temperature regulation, by the way - just not at the highest temperatures. You could walk to the office when it's 5 °C outside, then sit down at your desk without taking off anything.
Just wear a light colored linen suit without a tie. You’ll look great
Suit is the antithesis of clothes. It's uncomfortable and you need to pay attention 24/7 not to ruin it. Basically the male equivalent of high-heels. The first thing I require from clothes is practicality - I don't want to shit myself every time I step into mud or get sweaty or am cold or whatever.
> I don't want to shit myself every time I step into mud
username checks out?
>offer their condolences if you're in a suit (either a wedding or a funeral)
Nice, nice
Reading posts like this makes me painfully aware just how neurodivergent I am.
It took me until... late twenties? to understand that most people _aren't_ feeling physically uncomfortable in anything long sleeved (or with long pant legs), and that they're just more... patient? tolerant than I am?
It just straight up isn't an inconvenience to other people!
I am very, very, very glad I have a career (and live in a climate) that lets me get away with shorts and short sleeves on 99,9% of days.
I have similar sensory issues with long pants and long sleeved shirts. I have avoided wearing a long sleeve shirt nearly entirely (I actually can handle dress shirts somehow) for decades now.
It really sucks. I have similar problems with room temperature. If I'm too hot or sweaty it's extremely difficult to focus on work.
The worst part is that my air temperature tolerance isn't, like, coherent. In the summer I'm far too hot at 72 degrees and have to run the AC more than is reasonable. Then during the winter I am far too cold at 72 degrees. It's very silly. I tend to forget how much this affects me, and delay turning on the heat in the fall for too long, and just kind of struggle for a while without realizing it.
Some unsolicited advice couched as experience that may or may not help you:
I struggled with this off and on for years, and still do if I don't take some specific actions. They aren't a total fix but they help.
Turn off the air handling in your house and open it up at one point in the day, preferably a few hours opposite of the seasonal trend (early morning in the summer and early afternoon in the winter). During this time go take a decently long walk in appropriate clothes. When you come back close back up and set the thermostat to whatever the temperature cycled to.
This tends to work to shift seasons more naturally as well. If its hot outside it will feel cooler inside even if the temp went up a degree, and this compounds all season. The reverse is true in the fall/winter.
If I don't do this I struggle very similarly to you all year.
Maybe that can help you?
Lol, I grew up in a place with miserably hot and muggy summers, but I was very self-conscious of my skinny legs because someone made a weird comment one single time, so I almost never wore shorts through all my teenage years.
I eventually got over that, but now I live in a much cooler climate where shorts aren't really expected, even in the warmer seasons, and I'm grateful because I do feel more comfortable with pants (and long sleeves, for that matter).
Different strokes/neuro-eccentricities for different folks!
I myself have got very little problem with fabric on my arms or legs in general. The problem is, of course, temperature. Without any sort of reference to suits that are short sleeved, short legged, and a single layer of fabric, it feels like the article is just way off base. It's great that the author has found something he enjoys. But there are many reasons why others don't share his enthusiasm.
I consider myself "neurotypical", and have been working from home for a while now not getting any younger.
I don't even bother with clothing at all sometimes. It's also nice to shower midday and cook all my own meals. It's very nice to skip daily driving. It's amazing to not be too exhausted keep my home clean.
My point is, don't assume that neurotypical people aren't carrying at least some amount of stress from the things that bother you. It's just clearly a lot less stress.
Do you have sensory issues with specific fabrics as well? I have the same issues with long sleeves and it’s made much worse when it’s polyester. I can tolerate loose long sleeved cotton/linen pants much better.
Anything "scratchy" like real wool is right out immediately, and I can tolerate some knit cotton or linen longsleeves better than other fabrics, but nothing is "comfortable" per se.
I am exactly the same way. This year I had to attend a wedding during the heat wave in Germany (no AC anywhere). It was a sensory nightmare. Other guests seemed to just tank it or even somehow enjoy the weather…
I don’t think I’m Neurodivergent, but I hate long sleeves, too. And short sleeves, I like long sleeve shirts with the cuffs rolled or pushed up to the elbows.
Side-effect of being very tall and outgrowing shirts quickly as a youth.
You’re not neurodivergent, wtf people self diagnose like this as if it were some great discovery about themselves. Here’s another discovery you may not have made yet: we cannot know what others feel inside, even when they claim to tell us… they will just say what they think they should say or you want to hear. Revealing your inner thoughts is extremely difficult for most people, neurodivergent or not. Guessing others feelings about things also.
>You’re not neurodivergent
I have paperwork from three different countries disagreeing with you, but thanks for your concern :)
Yeah you as a random person online probably know more about the inner working of this random person you reply to in some online forum than they do themselves
It's not the point of being right or wrong, it's the point of default expectations of your body not matching factory settings of the environment configured for default expectations of other people.
> Guessing others feelings about things also.
Yet you confidently decided that they're not neurodivergent based on a comment?
The autistic community embraces self-diagnosis for lots of reasons (off the top of my head):
- it can be hard for autistic people to even go see a specialist - lots of autistic people have traumas related to being diagnosed wrongly and receiving bad treatment as a result
Lol this is a pretty wholesome, funny snapshot of an engineer reverse-engineering another field. And all the specific claims are right on, of course! A few elements are missing, though:
1. Suits are nice & durable because they're expensive. After my first "holy shit you're paying me how much??" job I replaced all my college tees with ~$1K in super high quality tees, and the difference is obvious to say the least. I do care for them a bit more (i.e. hangdry them), but still: more comfortable, more durable, more attractive.
2. Suits are tailored because they're expensive. You can get anything tailored! Expensive jeans also receive this benefit by default.
3. There are shitty suits. Presumably this guy has never looked for the very cheapest set at H&M in desparation!
That said, this guy's a smart cookie. And the comment about ties is just joyously relatable
I'd be curious to try a high-quality tee, I may have never worn one. I kind of assumed beyond a certain floor (100% cotton, decent fit) the price is just brand recognition? I end up wearing a lot of tees from events or bands, and I have noticed the Gildan ones do feel a lot better usually, but that's about the only difference I ever feel in tee shirts
Yeah I should clarify that you have to look for ones that differentiate themselves on quality rather than branding. I was lucky enough to get Pistol Lake ones before they went out of business (they invented their own cloth!) but there’s various others you can find I’m sure. Sunspel also makes quite expensive, quite incredible polos — might have plain tees too, not sure.
Definitely don’t, like, get Gucci or Supreme ones ;)
You can also get custom-made jeans and T-shirts. They fit better, you can pick the fabric, you can choose details, plus tailors tend to be fun to chat with. I could spend a whole day browsing the local fabric market chosing fabric for my next shirt.
I find it baffling, but custom-made shirts are cheaper than off-the-shelf.
You can also learn to make your own tshirts. Sewing is a useful skill in general, and tshirts are pretty easy. The neck band is a bit of a challenge, but other than that it's just cutting fabric to a template and sewing pieces together using a sewing machine.
Don't you need a serger for the overlock stitch used on most t-shirts? Those are neither cheap nor easy to use.
I mean the result might look better with an overlocker, but you can just fold and stich the ends instead. I guess it depends on what you're after. There are maker spaces and other creative hubs where you can easily use sewing machines or overlockers.
Or you can buy one for like ~€350. It's not cheap, but also not insurmountable if you want to go down the route of making your own clothes.
So you get your fabrics and tailor for less then two bucks?
Otherwise no, custom-made shirts are not universally cheaper than off the shelf
Go to your local Chinatown. You can get custom tailored clothing for a lot less than typical upper middle class branded office/semi-formal wear.
Tailoring is an old old art. Look beyond the flashy Saville Row brands or pseudo "quiet luxury" ones like Brunello that seem to be favored in the Valley.
Even gas station white tees cost more than two dollars. Where are you shopping?
I wonder how much of that is subsidized by the proprietors pursuing the custom-tshirt business lyfe
Where is this?
Any city that has proper suburban shops, strip malls, or Chinatowns. Avoid anything on Main Street. Look for small hole in the wall proprietor operations. This is one of the few times where economies of scale doesn't make things cheaper so avoid any big brands.
Also, watch a YouTube video or two to get a crash course on fabrics. In the states it's labor that's expensive but the fabrics are usually genuine. Alternatively you can go to South East Asia or places like Hong Kong and Japan too but there's a higher likelihood of fraud when it comes to the fabrics. Labor is about a magnitude cheaper though.
Bring your own fabrics if you want authenticity. Fabrics are cheap (relative to the cost of a nice suit on a tech worker's salary)
Another suggestion (not advice, I am hardly a professional when it comes to tailoring) is to commission more cotton clothing first to start so you can get a feel for the process. Suits are nice and all but are an investment of time and money and need constant dry cleaning. Try some custom tailor daily wear instead of H&M for a change (better quality and contributes to your local economy).
I would like to note that suit pants are ridiculously comfortable, and generally a fitted suit is far more comfortable than nearly anything else I wear daily. I don’t understand what crimes society has committed to achieve the outcomes of modern fashion.
Cost optimisation. It really comes down to cost. Maybe not over full lifetime, but still at purchase time.
Modern fashion dictates simply wearing whatever you are most comfortable in. Most people don't find suits to be comfortable (because they don't put in the effort to get them properly fitted, granted), and thus default to other styles of clothing. But if suits are what you are most comfortable in, then that is what the fashion suggests you must wear. Comfort is the fashion.
> Comfort is the fashion
It, most certainly, isn't, people wear all sorts of uncomfortable clothes and shoes in the name of fashion. Fashion is all about signalling your status and belonging to this or that social group. Suits are simply associated with people most folks don't want to be associated with.
> people wear all sorts of uncomfortable clothes and shoes in the name of fashion.
Some people do wear all sorts of uncomfortable clothes and shoes, but they do so when they want to reject the fashion. Fashionable people blend into the wall, so naturally some people gravitate towards anti-fashion in order to differentiate themselves from the rest of the heard.
I do agree that it has become fashionable to practice anti-fashion on special occasions, although that isn't the type of fashion we've been talking about.
looking art fashion shows, this is not exactly evident
I do enjoy wearing suit pants that are lined. It's like wearing satin shorts.
Certainly some valid points. My main issue with suits is your choice of materials is essentially just wool and polyester. Polyester is something I avoid at all costs, but wool is both expensive and delicate. I don’t want to have to dry clean clothes, it’s inconvenient and generally involves toxic chemicals.
Cotton is nice in that it’s natural, cheap, and durable. In theory there is nothing stopping you having regular pants or jeans custom tailored to your body shape.
Linen, linen blend.
Linen is an awful clothing material. I got a linen suit for the summer last year and it’s just such an inflexible material. A light wool has much more give, and with an open weave it does as much as a full suit of clothing can do to keep you cool.
Linen gets softer over time and is extremely durable, as well as quick-drying and lightweight. My favorite fabric for clothing/sheets/towels.
Linen has to be worn a lot to become flexible over time.
Polyester is great. Not in suits perhaps, but otherwise, it doesn't absorb sweat and so it's a much better option than cotton in warmer climates.
Polyester picks up bad smells a lot more than other fabrics, and it has a tacky shiny look. Acceptable at the gym or while playing sport, but not really anywhere else.
Not my experience regarding the smell.
The shiny look is probably not an unchangeable property of the polyester yarn. Right now I've got 100% polyester trousers (uniqlo) on me that are not at all shiny.
Tailored suits fit better than off-the-rack street clothes? That is not an argument for suits, it's an argument for tailoring.
The argument he makes is that suits are designed to be easily tailored, and tailored for many different aspects of the body.
Modern clothes aren't as easy to tailor, because the seams aren't placed well for tailoring, and the patterns / fabric shape also doesn't tailor well.
> Buttons > Zippers
I disagree. Yes, the failure mode of buttons is better. But the opening/closing process of zipper is much more convenient/faster than for buttons, and I dress and undress a lot more often than I need to replace a button or zipper.
I own a lot of zip hoodies, some of them > 10 years old, and for none of these the zipper has ever failed. The only zipper that have failed on me are on bags (e.g. messenger bags or similar)
I have a pair of jeans where Levi's has inexplicably decided to use buttons instead of a zipper. Why??? It's a struggle every time i go to a urinal.
I on the other hand much prefer buttons on jeans. Not because of the failure thing (as others have said: That’s not much of an issue anymore) but because of how Zippers make the fabric behave and shape. A button fly conforms much better to my personal waist/crotch anatomy, especially when sitting. Undoing a button fly can be even faster than a zipper because you just have to pull in the right direction from the top once (instead of opening one button and then pulling the zipper). Closing is more involved but I can do it with one hand and without thinking actively about it, so it’s fine for me, personally.
Levi's had an advertising campaign in the UK a few decades ago that promoted their "new" button fly, so it's mainly a fashion/marketing thing. Jeans were around before zips were invented, so it's a callback to the original design.
I remember wearing them and certainly they were really stiff and awkward to use when new.
Button Fly jeans were a popular fashion option when I was in high school in 2012. I thought it was hilarious that parents and companies were pushing on teenagers a product who's primary improvement in functionality was "You can rip them open and take them off faster"
I always thought that was sort of the opposite of what they wanted!
When Levi's first made jeans, zippers were not invented yet. You must have bought a pair from one of their original product lines.
Besides, pants with button fly have the distinctive advantage that you will never get your most sensitive skin accidentally pinched between the zippers. :)
What can I say, the risk makes me feel alive :p
Just wear underwear.
I think zippers from 40 years ago were much more likely to fail than they are today. I remember multiple failed jacket zippers when I was a kid, and having to fix them at the worst time.
But I can't think of any zippers, other than ones put under too much stress like an overstuffed bag or suitcase, that have failed recently.
Real backpacks should come equipped with a replacement zipper. In a secret pocket you will remember about it when you will need to remember.
The pain you feel when the zipper of your beloved 20-years old backpack fails is overwhelming. It rips through your soul. And all I want to do in that moment is to remember that I have a secret pocket inside it which keeps my replacement zipper. The feeling of having it there ready for me to fix my brother in arms will also give me an extra 20 years of good life. Small things. Matter. So much.
I much prefer the "dry-bag" style of backpacks that don't use zips (maybe for a small front pocket). I've previously cycled with many a brand of "waterproof" rucksacks and they always seemed to let in water through the zip in a heavy downpour. With my current rucksack, the top rolls down and then buckles together to form an airtight seal and that is absolutely waterproof and the contents would survive being thrown into a river. It's also extremely robust as there's nothing to go wrong apart from the material itself becoming worn through (not happened after years of heavy use).
A well designed set of buttons is much faster to open than a zipper, and about as fast to close. I've got a number of jeans with button flies where opening them is a single handed smooth motion. I've unfortunately also got a number where it's a real fight for each individual button.
I also love my hoodies, but zippers do get stuck every now and then if there’s anything on the way or if you accidentally zip them without locking the bottom thingy. So I’d prefer some sort of hoodie with 4-6 big buttons that I think I’ve seen on the street but not in stores.
Suits, neckties etc are decorations to project status, they are not functional, IMO. Same with shoes.
They'll fade away as wigs, top hats and bowler hats have. I don't recall seeing anyone in a suit in any of WWDC or Google etc events. I do like me a loose "sports jacket" once in while, but mainly for pockets.
OTOH, my wife likes to see me in a suit... "you're so handsome".
> Suits, neckties etc are decorations to project status, they are not functional, IMO. Same with shoes.
The function of suits is to flatter the imperfect human body, by adding structure and bulk in places like the shoulder, to slim the waist, and basically make the typical male look like a V. The necktie adds visual interest, basically an arrow pointing to your face and not the rest of your body. The wig hides an obvious indicator of aging. Hats were very useful when people spent a lot more time outside.
I don't know of many who think shoes aren't functional, other than the most diehard barefoot advocates.
You can think that appearance isn't functional, but tons of studies show that people do judge each other on appearances. Projecting status is the function of clothes, suits just occupy a rung above what is currently popular and what people usually want to project. People wear jeans all the time even though they don't work in the trades.
People say that your clothes are your expression. But actually it its other way around. You are an expression by your clothes. Your clothing tells you how to walk, behave and talk. You find yourself acting as a different person when you change your clothing.
For me wearing a suit is the worst in terms of clothing. One reason is the buttons. I hate wearing something with buttons. Just why. Instead I will just wear a white T-shirt. and then the jacket also has silly buttons. I just want single color, no writing, no button, no zippers, flexible tops. Also looks best in my personal opinion. Suits look unnecessarily complicated. I am aware that this may be on the scale, thanks.
Well-tailored suits also make you look sharp af. The day I got the most compliments for my clothes was when I was wearing a suit for my college farewell and smoking (no, it's not a cool habit, I'm just an addict) at a tea stall.
I don't ever get compliments if I'm not wearing a suit. Not a single one.
Do you ever "dress up" in anything but a suit? Color coordination and properly matching all the pieces of clothing, shoes, and accessories are the most basic of basics but very few people do them.
This is just a cultural effect.
I'm in India, suit wearing is not really a big cultural thing anymore (and I doubt it ever was for most people). At least if you're not a bureaucrat.
In many places being a bureaucrat is exactly the impression you will make, wearing a suit. Depends on the individual, whether they want that. As an engineer I wouldn't want that.
yeah its almost a meme -- the real engineers rock up in sweatpants
No, what I mean is people finding other people in suits attractive is a cultural thing across the world. I am also from India.
Fair enough. Though there must be some sort of universality in what people find attractive in men. Some lingering evolutionary behaviour (not necessarily suits), no?
I would sweat my ass off! I'm a guy who wears shorts and a t-shirt in autumn and spring. I can't imagine life in summer in a suit.
You would be very surprised at how well a good summer suit can breathe. If you tell your tailor that you need a suit that you can wear outside in the summer, they absolutely will point in the right direction with regards to material and fit.
There is no type of suit that will breathe well in Singapore. You just have to suffer and hope you can quickly get to an sir conditioned building.
I wear shorts and a t-shirt about 360 days a year. Long sleeves and pants are reserved for weddings, funerals and avoiding poison ivy and insect bites.
I find there is no clothing more uncomfortable than jeans. I simply don’t get their appeal. Washing makes them lose color, their material is rough. Maybe a good choice for workers, but not for wearing them every day. Alternative trouser choices (including those of suits) look better, are usually more comfortable and, at least for me, are good for years.
That said, the other issue of mothern clothing: sneakers… sure there are some high end ones that look amazing. But most of the time they just look cheap. The trend of making the soles white means you almost always look like wearing dirty shoes, as those rubber soles are almost impossible to whiten up again. Compare that to a good goodyear welted shoe: if the leather is good, you can wear them for a decade and just let the soles be replaced every few years. Leather shoes are not too comfortable in the first two weeks of wearing them, but with movement the leather softens and adapts to you. Even paying hundreds for them is ok: you’ll rarely have to replace them.
Jeans are the weirdest default style, a throwback to when they were a symbol of the US's cultural domination. They're often designed to project an image of hard work and use that very few of us do today. They are one of the few pieces of clothing that we intentionally buy pre-damaged with fades, rips, and holes since it skips over the actual hard work we would need to do to achieve those fades, rips, and holes.
In modern times, there are better options than jeans for almost all work tasks, and modern jeans are usually not designed for work as they're cut too slim and made with spandex. Jeans are basically a costume.
Screw suits. Screw modern clothing.
I want colorful, ornamental, kingly robes, flowing around me like an 15th century sultan.
What's stopping you? I know it might seem a flippant question but I mean it seriously.
Such clothing, or at least a plausible copy, would be much cheaper now than it was then. I don't do the kingly robe thing but I do wear colourful clothes almost every day and people love it. I was stopped in the street yesterday by a woman who wanted to take my picture.
The ones I envision are very expensive, and probably custom made. You can find them in eg in a very small selection of shops in Istanbul.
You are probably grossly overestimating the cost of custom-made clothing if you're hesitant about it while working in tech. Especially if you're buying Turkish. Have you seen the Lira lately? As an American, it's like a 2-3x buying power difference.
Fancy robe at home (union said no to RTO gelul, camera off because I don't want to explain the fancy robe), mid suit to the office once in two weeks to prevent the card from being blocked, a normie shirt for the calls when the camera is better to be on.
After writing this I wondered myself how sick would it be to be able to walk around in robes or togas. There must be a reason that kind of clothing has had so much success.
There's a reason people stopped wearing them: toilets. Robes are fine when you can pop a squat and drop a deuce on the roadside, but are a hassle when you have sit down.
My theory is it was horses but we don’t use horses anymore
I am always in the market for a good tailor.
Finding clothes that don't suck has become increasingly difficult. I have a hard time believing that some of this isn't on purpose. It's one thing to use cheap materials and labor. It's another to persistently get the geometry of the human form this wrong this often. Even the obesity crisis does not explain what I am seeing on the shelves at Walmart and Academy.
The hallmark for me are men's shorts. I have to go into obscure athletic retailers to find something that isn't obviously designed to slow me down and antagonize me. Adidas & friends stopped making things that fit correctly 3-4 years ago. I happily pay $100+ for a pair of shorts that don't suck in 2026.
Slowly but surely I think modern mass manufacturing is going to move towards personalised mass manufacture. I think in the meantime the clothes industry needs to do a better job of sizing, that is providing more detailed measurements so they can be selected better. At some point I ought to be able to buy a pair of trousers where I have defined more than just waist and length and especially true for tops based on chest or generic sizing. We can do this a lot better, its not intrinsic to suits they are just worn enough that bespoke services exist in quantity.
It sounds like I would like more personalised but I would like to know how you imagine it working.
Years ago the a custom shoe maker opened with a laser scan of the feet in their ‘shop’ (no products) and then choosing shoes online that they made to fit. They couldn’t fit my feet (I don’t know why). They no longer exist as a company.
I had some shirts from an online custom fit shirt maker, send your measurements and they make shirts. Taking my own measurements without the skill of a tailor is hard and the results were okay-ish but not great. Doubtless if I had kept doing it I would have improved - at great expense and waste.
I know someone who buys several pairs of the same jeans online at once, expecting that “the same” measurements will vary a lot because mass-manufacture of clothes doesn’t do fine tolerances, and has the intention to send most of them back. (And I stress this isn’t buying multiple sizes to choose the best, it’s buying multiple same-size expecting they will actually be noticeably different fits).
I can’t see that industry turning into significantly better ‘custom’ while still being ‘mass’.
The problem is that mass-produced clothing is not really machine-manufactured, it's assembly-lined and streamlined but most of the work is done by rooms of women with sewing machines (try designing a shirt or pants that can be 100% machine made). We can automate parts like the pattern cutting but the whole system is set up for 1 big order and there's no existing logistics chain to handle 1000 individual orders in many different styles.
I never understood the argument of "fashion over function" with regard to pockets on women's clothes. Among other things (protecting from elements and so on), aethetics is also a function of clothing. I don't have pockets on most of my dresses (or I have tiny pockets on jeans, pants, etc) not because there are no dresses with pockets (there are a lot and I do own some of those) but because they're often ugly and and I don't want to wear ugly clothes. Pockets distort the silhuette and don't hold shape well with ton of materials such as silk or thin cotton.
Does anyone offer “sport” suits?
I’d be interested in a traditional suit, but with a lot of extra give for mobility and cooling engineered in for active play. Think performing on stage under heavy lights or playing sports.
Or am I woefully uninformed about suits and this is already a common option?
The suits they make for bodyguards often have hidden stretch panels for greater mobility.
In reality, the sport coat was originally designed for equestrian sports. Modern fashion has turned the sporty features into aesthetic features. A equestrian wouldn't buy a normal sport coat and someone looking for a nice jacket to wear to brunch wouldn't buy a polo jacket.
This slightly resembles what I'd buy as a sport coat but the cut is a bit different because this coat is actually intended for horseback riding whereas my sport coat is cut for general comfort.
https://rjclassics.com/products/knight-melton-hunt-coat-blac...
Where I live, you can get made-to-measure shirts. I think it’s overkill to wear suits just because your body proportions are unusual.
My counter argument will be argued by Alan Watts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kd68ijKxW0
It's not saying that suits are necessarily bad but that we can do so much better.
Suits are too restrictive. It is efficient but totally lacking in redundancy and resilience.
Very cool. I'm now actively searching for a yukata. Thanks for sharing!
Some of my observations:
I think suit trousers are more comfortable than jeans. It’s like wearing pyjamas.
Buttoned up shirts are superior to t-shirts. You can open up extra buttons for ventilation. You can roll your sleeves up and down. There is often an extra front pocket. The collar last longer and it can even be repaired.
suits are flimsy and need to be dry cleaned.
not really, and you dry clean them pretty seldomly
Maybe you. I sweat a lot and if I'm wearing polyester, I stink so much even I can't bear it. I would need at least three suits a week and they would need to be cleaned each week. Tossing cheap cotton clothes into washer every week is much easier and I always wear zip-up hoodies when it's cold, so it's easier to thermoregulate.
> I sweat a lot and if I'm wearing polyester (...)
Please don't!
If you sweat a lot, wearing polyester is the worst decision you can make!
Not only it makes you sweat more, but it also smells really bad, as compared to wool or even cotton (or linen if you live in a hot area).
Maybe it doesn't work if you sweat a lot, but undershirt and a shirt should absorb most of it. Or you actually get three suits and dry wash them each week if it's important.
(not the GP) Wearing more will make the sweating worse though. It helps up to some degree, but the soaking capacity of undershirt and shirt is not infinite. Not even talking about the discomfort of sweating even more due to wearing more.
So that brings with it one of the following: (1) Be very careful, to an uncomfortable degree, when wearing a suit, or (2) run around in a dirty suit for a while.
Doesn't seem too practical.
I have a friend in his 30s that always wears a suit, to work, to the club, to hanging with friends. He is one of the more successful people I know as far as both quick career climbing and getting phone numbers of women he approaches.
Is he a confident person and handsome/good build?
Ie maybe it's not the suit or the suit alone
Almost every suit worth paying good money for uses a fine type of wool for the outer fabric. Wool has advanced a lot over the years but has always been breathable, odor-resistant and not terrible in the rain. (Not as good as a good synthetic blend, which is very modern relative to the suit, but it won't get heavy and take forever to dry like cotton does or hotbox you like pure poly will.)
I've tailored t-shirts before I discovered a brand called 2tall which fits well enough.
I wore suits for the first 30 years of my life, but I can't stand them and they're terrible in warmer climates, I'm never wearing shorts with a suit. And that's part of it beyond the suitability (pun intended); there are unsaid overtones about wearing a suit that imply formality, status, etc. that I just do not want in my life.
I wore a suit for years at work. I liked it! Even a with scratch built tailored suit, the trousers would wear through though.
Eventually, can't remember why, I stopped
> Even a with scratch built tailored suit, the trousers would wear through though.
And this is the ultimate downfall of a suit. When jeans and t-shirts start to show wear then they transition from street clothes to work clothes and continue to live a useful life. As for suits, well, having a tie dangling around machinery isn't the best combo. Not even during peak suit did people wear them in the field.
I’ll absolutely reuse a worn out tailored pair of pants made from good fabric for working or hanging around. I don’t wear business-powersuits, though and that makes a difference for that kind of re-use, I think.
Depending on what you mean by “suit” exactly, people have absolutely worn them in the field for a long time and some still do. British farmers in some thick, hard-wearing tweed or felted fabric trousers, Wellington/work boots, a work shirt and depending on the temperature a more or less suit-like jacket are sort of a cliché, for example. I’m not really arguing against your point, though - just saying that it’s a bit of a continuum and there are many things between the completely impractical tie-dangling machine and jeans+t-shirt.
Very subjective, esp the part about woman's clothing. Yes, they don't have pockets, but honestly I can't stand having a lot of stuff in pockets. The tacticle sensation of stuff in pockets bothers me. Would much rather just have it all in a cute handbag. Grab the bag and go. No need to fill and unfill pockets. Better. Again, it's subjective.
My life quality became so much better when I discovered loose / yoga pants. Your sizes change week to week a bit in a way that it counts, and you get into random body positions in which things get tight without you immediately noticing. No clothing should have buttons on it.
A suit is the antithesis of good clothing. Its only appeal is the socially constructed notion that it looks "good".
This title reminds me of the famous MOMA exhibition "Are Clothes Modern?" https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3159
“ Even if I feel physically more comfortable in suits, and they are functionally better, I won’t use them when it’s not needed. The only reason is that it’d be socially awkward.”
If you’re an Ashkenazi orthodox Jew, it’s the opposite. Wearing suits every day is the norm. Along with a hat in some denominations.
(In 1930s it was also the norm for many men to do both.)
Does it have to be any hat or that particular hat that I'm seeing in my head now?
But suits are very modern clothing; what we consider normal black suit is very much 20th century phenomenon, the uniform of a modern business man. So the dichotomy of "modern clothing" vs "suits" seems very off to me.
Wear whatever the fuck you want, and don't judge people for what they wear. It's that simple (barring a few exceptions around safety and whatnot).
You can get clothes adjusted/altered, even cheap store bought ones. I often have to get new jeans altered because my legs are chonkier than their length justifies. Some stores still have people on site who can make alterations for you. Some don't, but it's easy (at least in my town) to find little shops that do alterations/mending.
> Everyone wears street/modern fashion, and I don’t want to really go to a friends house in suit and tie. It sucks but that is the way things are.
Just wear the suit and tie if you want to. This is such a non-issue.
a lot of people use fashion as a means of self-expression and suits tend to function as a vehicle for uniformity.
If I see a person with a generic arm tattoo, hoodie with skateboard logo, and sweat pants, it express the same amount of uniformity as a person in a bad off-the-rack suit with a boring tie.
Only if you're exceptionally lazy with it. Sure, everybody's got to have a black suit for winter weddings and funerals, but you've got a lot more freedom with your summer suit. Whole range of shirt colors, neckwear is a whole world of fashion choices, etc.
that's like saying everyone should just eat porridge, after all there are so many different combinations of ingredients you can put in it! why would you ever want to eat anything else!
I don’t like ironing, for me, it’s a waste of time. And I like to be able to trip into brambles. I get suits for special occasions but not as a daily driver. Too much maintenance and upkeep. You can tailor anything to your tastes!
I also find ironing a waste of time. That’s why I only buy non iron shirts.
Another option is just paying for a laundry service. It's really not that expensive (think <$20 a week, in one of the highest cost of living areas in the world), and your clothes end up looking much better than the alternatives. I got into it because I fucking loathe folding clothing.
The funny side of suit fitting. Zumbach The Tailor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0iSR1H02E0
Womens suits dont have much practical pockets, so that point is moot.
And suits are not the only piece of clothing with many pockets or with buttons. So the whole argument is “I like custom fitted suits”
Author here. Women clothing is another whole beast. Not sure if it’s due to fashion or historical reasons but convenience is the last priority in women’s fashion.
Women’s clothing has always confused me.
I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago and the bride’s dress had pockets. It may have been the least important time in her life to have them, but it had them.
I used to wear a suit at school and university. It was convenient (big inner pockets!) but also too bulky.
I now wear a long-sleeved shirt (take that, sun) with big front pockets.
This friend group, of which I was not a part of, would “suit up” for a night out. Fun little tradition it seemed to me.
Tailored clothes fit better than off the peg clothes.
I think that's what you're trying to say?
Agreed. It is finally time to go back into wearing suits rather than the era of cringe-worthy hoodies.
You'be been waiting for a blog post to make this decision?
Fuck that, you can have pry my t-shirts, hoodies, cargo shorts, and kirkland stretchy jeans from my cold dead hands.
A tailored suit and shirt costs an order of magnitude more than a pair of jeans and a t shirt, so yeah, no shit?
True, and that's one reason suits disappeared:
People had to wear a suit and wanted it to be as cheap as possible, which led to a race to the bottom in suit quality. In the end we had fused jackets and synthetic fabrics which made you sweat with people in turn not even bothering to get cuffs and hems adjusted. Absolutely horrible. This is why casual took over.
Maybe it's time for us to recognize that a good suit serves you for years and decades and as such can cost a few hundred bucks.
And despite the little supply due to classical menswear being irrelevant today, there are also incredible deals to be found at goodwills and the like.
> good suit serves you for years and decades
Don't all clothes? I buy bargain rack t-shirt and jeans and get decades out of them just fine.
They are kinda high maintenance too, can't just throw a bunch in a washer machine.
If you're comparing good jeans and a good t shirt then not In my experience. Likewise you can also buy a crappy suit for not a lot of money. I think the core point stands that a suit gives pretty good bang for your buck now and hasn't been enshittified as much as casual clothing is.
Are they back though?
TLDR: I have unusual extremities to torso ratio hence I find custom fitted suits more comfortable. Some nonsense about button and pockets that are not exclusive to suits.
Why is this on HN to start with and how the hell did it get to the front page?
Gloom weather season coming to the continent, everybody needs a good excuse to fly to their tailoring destination of choice, get a suit tailored and visit some temples. Or whatever you do there.
While at it, don't forget to put on your fedoras.