![]() The floor manager caught my eye and called me over. He selected two jackets, then moved on to trousers, shirts and ties. One day I approached a portly man in late middle age, browsing through a rail of sports jackets (44 regular at a guess). Occasionally, when I wasn’t folding and pressing, fetching and carrying, I’d be let loose on the sales floor. In fact, they were the only thing about the job I did like. I liked wearing it, along with the shirts, silk ties and cashmere socks – leftover stock available in the staff sale. A Daks suit, in a mid-grey pinhead worsted, came with the job, made-to-measure rather than bespoke. And there was little need for a suit in the quick succession of jobs that weren’t journalism that followed.įor a while, I worked as a trainee buyer at Simpsons of Piccadilly, a posh department store (it would later be the inspiration for the popular TV comedy Are You Being Served? – its writer Jeremy Lloyd had once worked there). ![]() I dreamed of becoming a journalist and, thinking it would further my prospects, I wore the suit walking up and down Fleet Street, going into every newspaper office asking if there was an opening. ![]() My suit cost £17 10 shillings – a pinstripe number that I fancied made me look sophisticated, grown-up. Rather than taking him to hospital, the woman took him back to Burton for Mr Hattersley to sort out the problem. The husband, unused to this newfangled invention, caught his member in the zip. It was the time when zips were replacing button flies. Roy Hattersley, the former Labour grandee, worked in Burton as a university student, and tells the story of selling a suit to a woman for her husband. Its founder Montague Burton, born Meshe David Osinsky in Lithuania in 1885, had come to England in 1900 and, after opening his first shop in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, expanded to over 400 shops, offering a decent suit at a reasonable price to the working man. It was from Burton, the high-street menswear chain. I was 16 when my parents bought me my first suit. Left: Soho tailored-fit suit, £805, Paul Smith, Swiss Classic Fit shirt, £200, Emma Willis, Rubinacci silk tie, £210, Mr Porter. Though when everybody is wearing the same thing, where do you go from there? It is the suit that has become the true symbol of rebellion. The rise of the ubiquitous chinos, that shirt-over-a-T-shirt look and – horror! – elasticated-waist trousers is a sign, perhaps, of a more egalitarian, more inclusive, age. You could tell who a man was, what he did, how much he was able or prepared to pay, from his suit. But it’s also a canvas for a multitude of signifiers – of wealth, status, style. Everyone from newsreaders to bouncers to miscreants on their first court appearance wears one. Theoretically, it is the most democratic of garments. ‘Covid hit fast-forward on the trend to more casual dressing that was already in train,’ the firm explained. Sales of formalwear had dropped by 15 per cent online and 72 per cent in stores, in the year up to April.īy contrast, there was a 61 per cent increase in people purchasing casualwear online. In August, Marks & Spencer announced it had stopped stocking suits across more than half of its 245 clothing stores, apparently to ‘be more relevant to customers’ rapidly changing needs’. But the pandemic has driven another nail into the coffin. ![]() Even before Covid, major banks and corporations were relaxing their policy on wearing suits to the office: in 2019, the market research group Kantar was reporting that more than £110 million had been wiped off annual suit sales in just four years. Then, ‘Meeting the bank manager?’ Closely followed by, ‘Are you going to a funeral?’ A funeral for the suit, perhaps. ‘It’s a job interview, isn’t it?’ said the first person. Until, with a spring in my step, I walked into the Telegraph offices. And why not top it off with a knitted silk tie? I felt, in some curious, indefinable way, better about myself. But then again, why not?Ī super-lightweight wool, olive, loose-fitting suit. A warm, late summer’s day, rifling through the clothes rail, and thinking, ‘I haven’t worn that for a while.’ But why would I? For the past 18 months there’s been little reason to, with everybody ‘working from home’ in track bottoms, checking in for Zoom calls, then sloping off to the café to sit in the sunshine. ![]()
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