

Happy Birthday to the Suit - Andrew_Quentin
http://www.economist.com/node/17722802?story_id=17722802

======
johnohara
As a younger man, I worked in the concrete construction business for exactly
10 hours.

In the morning, we unloaded and placed an entire truckload of foundation forms
by hand. In the afternoon, we dug out the ground for a new garage pour, by
hand. Then, a full truckload of gravel showed up, and we spread it, by hand.

I fell asleep in the truck on the way back to the yard.

The next day, the owner approached me, gave me $100 dollars cash, and thanked
me for my service. That was it. Career over.

I spent the $100 on a new suit. I didn't know what I was going to do for a
job, but I knew I wanted that suit as my work clothes.

~~~
sliverstorm
To clarify, you quit, or he fired you because you fell asleep?

------
j2d2j2d2
I used to work for Bear Stearns. I was thinking of quitting before the crisis
hit but had to stay and watch after the day our stock value dropped to $2 a
share.

By the time I left I really hated working there. I tell some of the story
here: <http://j2labs.net/blog/2010/jan/11/economies-pools-and-piss/>

Anyway, when I moved out of the apartment I had, near Wall St, I threw out my
suits. I told myself I'd never take a job that required a suit. The suit felt
like a hollow nod between business men that the appearance of success was to
be regarded just as highly as the ability to succeed.

I'm less hostile to suits today, but I much prefer to do business with the
types of people that also don't like wearing them.

~~~
niccl
Most of the time I work as a contract software and hardware engineer. I
usually wear Jeans and a T-shirt for that.

Sometimes I take a short contract doing my old job of management consultant.
Then I tell the client I'll wear a suit if they want me to, but I charge $30
per hour more if I do (around a 20% premium). I make it clear that they get
the same advice and analysis no matter what I wear. Every client has paid the
extra. I'm sure it says something about something, but I'm not really sure
what.

~~~
cynicalkane
I really have to disagree with this attitude.

Suits are the great equalizer of clothing. They're designed to downplay the
wearer's bodily proportions, and it's very hard to look bad in one. Most
people can't tell the difference between a cheap suit, well-tailored, and an
expensive one. The suit-and-tie pattern visually draws the eyes toward the
wearer's face. Aside from these things, they have very little detail, and
that's why they were the post-Depression standard businesswear in America,
replacing things like morning coats and top hats and stripey pants.

Computer guys usually don't wear suits because they don't want to spend the
extra time and money on them. That's fine. But it should be understood that
the typical business casual getup is often visually more distracting than a
suit, and does not emphasize the face over the body like a suit does.

You'd be better off just charging everyone $30 extra, and always wearing the
suit.

~~~
arethuza
I take it you _have_ to wear a suit for work then?

~~~
Leynos
I'm not obligated to wear a suit to work, and I don't mainly for reasons of
economy and the fact that I'm too lazy to take care them properly. Despite
that, I still agree with everything that is said in the grandparent post.

------
Umalu
Interesting history of the suit. But while the article sees a future for the
suit, to me the suit is history. Suits once denoted upper class, and sumptuary
laws prevented lower classes from looking upper. Now suits denote lower middle
management in an old economy company. No one aspires to that. Jeans, sweats
and t-shirts are the new class separator, indicating which of us have earned
the freedom from having to wear suits.

~~~
mkn
Thorstein Veblen, in _The Theory of the Leisure Class_ , has an insight that I
think you've missed: Suits make lower-class labor work impossible for the
wearer, and are therefore intrinsically a signal of higher class.

That sumptuary laws are gone is not a weakening of the class distinction
implied by suits, but a demonstration of their effectiveness.

 _> >No one aspires to that. Jeans, sweats and t-shirts are the new class
separator, indicating which of us have earned the freedom from having to wear
suits._

The key thing here is that there is a difference between aspiration and
ability. Clothes unsuitable for labor merely indicate a commitment to an
information occupation. Suits, expensive clothes that look good and are
unsuitable for labor, also indicate a social commitment to the organization, a
social commitment necessary to advance within the ranks.

In many, if not most, software firms, the way to success is upward through
management. For a while, it was through stock options or stock grants. In the
latter two scenarios, no social commitment was necessary, so come-as-you-are
became the norm.

Come-as-you-are seems to survive for two other reasons. Firstly, the class
distinction between partners & the board vs the line-level programmers has to
do with ownership, and no amount of coding, whether performed in jeans or in a
suit, can help you over that barrier within the organization. Secondly and
consequently, the route across that social divide, for the line-level
programmer, is via a start-up effort undertaken as a side project, outside the
social structure of the worker's organization.

These trends are not heading in a direction that portends an infinite ocean of
denim and sweats, but rather for a re-emergence of business casual or even
smart casual in the workplace for programmers, and again for suits in the
managing establishment. Suits are a signifier that someone is adept at
controlling other humans and getting them to perform work for them. The
ability to get computers to do useful (capital-capturing) work has upended
this temporarily. As this algorithmic market commoditizes, or at least as the
exploitable niches fill, the ability to control people instead of machines
will become more important again. Even without commoditization and niche-
capture, the fitness advantage of being able to control and manage an
organization still portends a crystallization of an owning class, complete
with ownership regalia, the suit.

The short of it is this: If you program for another organization and don't
have an amazing side-project, you might consider the slacks-and-jacket smart
casual look if you want to move ahead.

~~~
donaldc
_These trends are not heading in a direction that portends an infinite ocean
of denim and sweats, but rather for a re-emergence of business casual or even
smart casual in the workplace for programmers, and again for suits in the
managing establishment._

Says you. You must be exposed to very different workplaces than me. I've yet
to work at a place in the last ten years where any of suits, business casual,
or smart casual is practiced, or encouraged. Pretty much, normal street
clothes are perfectly fine.

~~~
fecklessyouth
I wonder how accurately HN can discuss the general trend from business to
casual, considering the heavy concentration in the later.

------
CallMeV
I watched a TV documentary a few months back, which took a look inside the
various tailors' establishments of Savile Row. Consider this: back then, these
shops were the startups and entrepreneurs of their day, coming to the street
with a few bolts of cloth and next to no money in their hands, spotting the
needs of the customers and moving in to sell them a product specifically
suited to their needs.

The age of many of these stores speaks volumes of their capacity to read the
market over the decades. Anyone who's ever set up a business and wanted it to
last could do well to look at these businesses' example.

------
andreyf
Relevant? <http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

~~~
mdda
Naturally, this could be a clever PR campaign - and I would be more
suspicious, apart from it appearing in this edition of the Economist :

The Christmas Economist is a special two-week version : the content of a
regular issue makes up about 50%, the other 50% consists of special multi-page
articles written by staff writers when the urge took hold (but were too long
to put into a regular edition). This is somewhat akin to Google's 20% time :
The writers are given an opportunity to publish pieces that they've written
_for the love of writing_.

Of course, this could be my own rose-coloured glasses (I've been a religious
Economist reader for 15 years).

~~~
jamesbritt
"The writers are given an opportunity to publish pieces that they've written
for the love of writing."

Wow.

For Christmas I bought the wife a subscription to The Economist.

I wanted something to wrap, so I picked up the current issue at Barnes&Noble
(surprisingly, neither Walgreen nor Safeway had it). It happened to be the
year-end double-issue.

I saw the suit article; now I'm curious about the other articles, since I bet
their authors have made them interesting by virtue of their own enthusiasm.

------
Mz
I love fashion history. There is so much social history tied up in it.

Excerpts:

 _Savile Row was inhabited largely by surgeons before the tailors moved in
during the 19th century, and their influence can be seen in the “surgeon’s
cuff”. On the most expensive suits the cuff buttons, which mirror the pips of
military rank, can be undone, allowing the sleeve to be rolled back. This let
surgeons attend patients spouting blood without removing their coats—an
important distinction that set them apart from shirt-sleeved tradesmen of the
lower orders. Surgeon’s shirts, with detachable cuffs, are still made to order
by London tailors._

And:

 _Colours and cuts come—the fashion a decade ago was for four-button
jackets—and go. Yet the modern world has transformed the suit’s interior.
Pockets for train and bus tickets appeared with the commuter. Pen pockets and
pockets for mobile phones have followed. Mr Munday has fielded inquiries about
internal pockets to hold an iPad. No problem, he says. They are not so very
different to the large “hare” pockets on the inside of field coats worn by
country gents that will hold birds and rabbits felled with a shotgun._

~~~
mbesto
Form follows function.

------
johnyzee
The Suit is Back!

------
bediger
Another PR Hit for Men's Wearhouse, eh?

~~~
tomjen3
If it was, I do not mind. It was an interesting article of the kind that we
want on hn. It should not matter who wrote it.

------
edge17
that was enlightening

