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.
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)
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.
> 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.).
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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 to simply to wear 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. Not seeking comfort is what what leave you to be unfashionable.
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 clothing fashion.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 ;)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
“ 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.)
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 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.
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.
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.
>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 difference is 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.
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 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.
I don't think anyone would want suit pants made of denim. And the whole reason I'm having them tailor made, is because I do not like the common standards like Levi's 501 or suit pants. Fortunately there is plenty a good tailor can do with jeans style pants.
You don't like common patterns and thus hire a taylor to design pants in some unique patterns you call "jeans"? Okay. One thing which is still a mystery is this: if you don't like common patterns then why call your designs after them?
There are lots of different patterns wel beyond 501s that people call jeans. Mine still fall well within that range. But they're more comfortable and look better than anything I've ever seen for sale.
">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 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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 49.5 ms ] threadPlease 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).
Doesn't seem too practical.
Nice, nice
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.
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.).
username checks out?
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...
as someone with a recent interest in this, do you have any pointers?
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.
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'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.
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.
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 clothing fashion.
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.
Don't all clothes? I buy bargain rack t-shirt and jeans and get decades out of them just fine.
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kd68ijKxW0
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
Definitely don’t, like, get Gucci or Supreme ones ;)
Eventually, can't remember why, I stopped
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.
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.
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.
Why is this on HN to start with and how the hell did it get to the front page?
I find it baffling, but custom-made shirts are cheaper than off-the-shelf.
Otherwise no, custom-made shirts are not universally cheaper than off the shelf
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.
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.)
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)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I've told my wife I'll wear one to my funeral.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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 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.