Remember the scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” where Cary Grant is being chased through a farm field by a killer crop duster?
The clip from the 1959 classic is memorable for many reasons, but there’s one detail that particularly stands out:
In that cornfield, while being sprayed by pesticides and attacked by bullets raining from the sky, Grant–the poster boy for old-school style–is wearing the perfect tailored suit.
You remember it. Slate gray. Two buttons. A crisp white shirt. French cuffs!
Ahh, for the 1950s, when a man was impeccably dressed, even while rolling around in the dust.
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Unfortunately, like that stylish two-button that Grant wears throughout Hitchcock’s famous tale of mistaken identity, over the years the well-tailored men’s suit has taken quite a beating.
Khakis on the wane
Khakis and blue button-down shirts have become the professional man’s uniform. Young men wear jeans on first dates, and slacks and sport shirts to weddings and graduations. Sometimes even their own.
But slowly that has been changing, fashion observers say. With each passing season, “dressed down” is becoming less and less acceptable as all-weather, all-occasion attire.
So this fall, men will find themselves in the starring role of another classically stylish film–but with a slight twist.
The suit is back, gentlemen.
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“It seems like this year kind of exploded. It’s really exciting,” said Edward Steinberg, president of J.S. Edwards Men’s Clothing in Pikesville, Md. “Men’s fashion has taken a turn for the better, probably the best I’ve seen in years. People are starting to understand dressing up again.”
It was bound to come to this, fashion experts say.
The “dress-down Friday” of the late 1980s somehow mutated into dress-down every day. And by the ’90s, 22-year-old dot-com zillionaires were pointedly wearing shorts and sneakers to the office, just because they could.
“Well, companies really aren’t accepting that anymore. They want people to look a little more professional,” Steinberg said. “I think companies started to realize that they really let it go too far, as far as what is corporate casual.”
The pendulum swings
So the pendulum swung back.
“Menswear has been trending in a certain direction for the last season or two, and it’s really started to hit home this season,” said Michael Anderson, vice president of menswear design for Banana Republic. “And that trend is marked by a return to a more tailored dressing.”
Like the tweed jacket for ladies this fall, the tailored suit is this season’s must-have item for men.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Men also will be wearing sport coats again, and blazers. Button-up shirts instead of T-shirts.
And maybe, just possibly, even a tie.
“We’re in a clean-up-your-act mode,” said Stan Williams, fashion director at Maxim magazine. “I see kids in [New York’s] East Village wearing a tailored jacket, and maybe even a tailored suit with a skinny tie. I can’t remember the last time I saw kids wearing neckwear.”
The jacketed look is not as big and bulky, however, as most of today’s men are used to wearing their clothing. The XXL, one-size-fits-all rack at your local men’s store just won’t cut it this fall.
Anderson, of Banana Republic, calls this season’s look “bespoke”–a common English term that means “custom-made.”
“The last major reincarnation with blazers, they were a lot more sloppy. Now things are becoming more elegant, more refined,” he said. “Everything looks a little more fitted, more tailored. There’s a nod toward that sort of equestrian, English, bespoke feel.”
Tradition returns
To that end, many of the season’s trendy jackets have a traditional look: herringbone, pin-striped, plaid, jacquard. Rich, old-fashioned, retro.
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“What we’re seeing is guys wearing it with a lot of denim pieces so it’s sort of dressed down but not sloppy looking,” Anderson said. “The denim makes the jacket look hip and the jacket makes the denim look a little more refined.”
The button-up shirt also is making a comely comeback this season.
Sport shirts. Woven shirts. Bold striped shirts. Wide collars. French cuffs–with or without cufflinks.
“Guys are coming in and they’re buying suits and they’re wearing them with sport shirts open at the collar,” Steinberg said. “Some are leaving the sleeves open, so it’s kind of rebellious.”
They’re also wearing button-up shirts with jeans, untucked generally, maybe rolled up at the sleeves.
“They’re showing a little more individuality now,” Steinberg said. “Guys don’t want to look like their father when they go to work. They want to show some individuality and some expression, and this is a great way to do it. The white shirt and the blue button-down, it’s still out there for the corporate scene, but there’re more choices now.”