Skip to main content

as ms stores scale back on selling suits harry mount says men like him feel naked outside the safety zone of formal wear

You never forget your first M&S suit. I bought mine when I was 22, fresh out of university and making a disastrous attempt at being a banker in the City of London.

It was grey, pin-striped, too flared in the trousers and too narrow in the lapels. But it did the job it was intended to: unshowy, dependable, affordable. And by making those mistakes, I gradually worked out what looked good and what to avoid.

Ten years later, when I won the world's most unglamorous bet — collecting £2,000 on Michael Howard becoming Tory leader in 2003 — I spent the proceeds on two suits from Huntsman, one of the finest tailors in Savile Row, the home of the British suit in Mayfair, London. I wore the trousers until they fell apart, but I still have the miraculous jackets.

They continue to flatter me and make me look half a stone lighter. The late Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones wore Huntsman suits. 

The suit wasn't just our national costume, it became the world's costume for formal wear. Pictured: Paul Whitehouse and Mark Williams in The Fast Show

The suit wasn't just our national costume, it became the world's costume for formal wear. Pictured: Paul Whitehouse and Mark Williams in The Fast Show

Just like Prince Charles, who favours tailor-made suits, he never went out of style. While his bandmates wore outlandish, fashionable outfits that now look outdated, Watts's suits remained timelessly cool.

The suit wasn't just our national costume, it became the world's costume for formal wear. In Japan, they call the formal business suit 'Saburo' — their pronunciation of Savile Row.

British suits are literally synonymous with formal wear across the globe. How sad, then, that we are now waving goodbye to one of our greatest inventions.

One hundred years since we introduced the suit to the world (we'll come to its origins in a moment), fashion and the Covid pandemic are killing it off. And, what's worse, suits are being replaced by the most terrifying expression in the English language: 'smart-casual'.

Marks & Spencer has been one of Britain's biggest sellers of men's suits ever since 1939, when it sold its first flannel ones. But it emerged this weekend only 110 of its 254 clothing stores still stock suits — that's well under half of them.

Formal clothing for work and leisure was already on the way out — but then the pandemic struck in 2020. Sales went into freefall as people worked from home and, in Zoom calls, wore anything they wanted — or nothing at all — below the waist.

In the year to April, sales of formal wear at M&S collapsed by 15 per cent online and an extraordinary 72 per cent in shops, compared with a year earlier.

It emerged this weekend only 110 of the 254 Marks and Spencer clothing stores still stock suits

It emerged this weekend only 110 of the 254 Marks and Spencer clothing stores still stock suits

The upmarket suit chain TM Lewin shut all 66 of its UK shops last year and Moss Bros reported pre-tax losses of £7.4 million for the year to January 2020

The upmarket suit chain TM Lewin shut all 66 of its UK shops last year and Moss Bros reported pre-tax losses of £7.4 million for the year to January 2020

Over the same period, sales of casual wear were up 61 per cent online. The same slump applies across the board in other shops.

The analyst Kantar says British shoppers bought two million men's suits in the year up to this July, compared with 4.3 million five years ago and 5 million a decade ago. The upmarket suit chain TM Lewin shut all 66 of its UK shops last year.

And Moss Bros, the world-famous formal-wear shop, celebrating its 170th anniversary this year, reported pre-tax losses of £7.4 million for the year to January 2020. 

It was delisted from the London Stock Exchange last year. And £100 million was wiped off annual suit sales from 2015 to 2019.

It gets worse. Workers returning to the office are opting for what the fashion world has recently termed the 'broken suit' — in old parlance a jacket and trousers.

GQ magazine recently ran an article about the 'broken suit' talking about combinations which suggest effort and care, as well as a touch of 'studied carelessness'.

Sounds very like smart-casual to me. And just as confusing. Care and carelessness at the same time? Smart and casual?

In 2019, Goldman Sachs, the huge American bank, announced a move to a 'flexible dress code'; JP Morgan, another American bank, now asks its workers to wear 'business-casual' — another indefinable mystery for the petrified man dressing in the morning.

These banks, I suppose, are emulating the scruffy dress code of the big tech companies, exemplified by Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief who's almost permanently in a T-shirt or hoodie and jeans, and the late Steve Jobs, the Apple supremo, clad in black turtleneck and jeans.

Zuckerberg says he wears his grey T-shirt every day because he believes that thinking about clothes is 'silly' and 'frivolous'.

But, surely, he's the silly one. The great joy about the suit is that men don't have to think.

It removes the question of what you should wear each day — apart from your choice of shirt — and equips you with the most stylish outfit known to man.

Mark Zuckerberg says he wears his grey T-shirt every day because he believes that thinking about clothes is 'silly' and 'frivolous'

Mark Zuckerberg says he wears his grey T-shirt every day because he believes that thinking about clothes is 'silly' and 'frivolous'

Women, by contrast, face a daily dilemma: skirt or trousers; floaty dress or power suit; plain or patterned; evening wear or morning comfort — each day a maelstrom of decisions about hemlines, colour matches, warmth vs style . . . and that's before you even start on the shoes to go with it.

Small wonder, perhaps, British women, who by-and-large, dress so much better than men, haven't given up formal wear so easily. Sales of women's suits have fallen less dramatically.

But, in any case, women know what to do when the rules of dress change. Even when those rules aren't so strict, they look presentable compared with their men by dint of the fact that they take so much more time and trouble over their outfits.

When men drop out of the safety zone of formal wear, they look disastrous. But if the whole market has been shifting away from suits, the decline of the M&S versions in particular is a tragic moment in the history of British male clothing.

One's first M&S suit was a rite of passage for so many young men in their first job — or job interview.

Yes, it was often ill-fitting: sometimes tight, sometimes baggy, in all the wrong places.

That wasn't the fault of M&S — more that of the nervous youngster, who didn't know that suit cuffs shouldn't run halfway down your thumb.

Here was not just affordable tailoring for the masses, but history made cloth.

The M&S suit is a descendant of the 18th-century British riding coat, which mutated into the morning coat (similar to what you might wear at a wedding) in the 19th century.

In around 1900, that long coat morphed into the Deeside coat, which was still pretty long — it had four buttons down the front.

The British dropped the fourth button just before World War I, and the modern suit was born. The Americans copied us after World War I, going for three buttons. Then, after World War II, the Americans introduced the two-button suit.

For a century, then, from World War I until now, the British suit has ruled the world.

True, there have been changes over the years. Suit trousers and lapels became very thin during the Mod years in the 1960s.

They became regrettably flared and wide in the 1970s. Suits turned boxy and shaped in the 1980s before reverting to their classic form in the 1990s, where they have hovered ever since.

Materials changed, too. M&S branched out of that original 1939 flannel suit into tweed, wool, linen and — God forbid — polyester.

But, still, at heart, the suit's DNA stayed essentially the same: matching trousers and jacket with lapel, cuffs, a breast pocket and two side pockets.

Until now, that is. And as we mourn the suit's terminal decline, what will replace it on the shop rails of Middle England's High Streets?

God help us, M&S has reported growing sales of those crimes against fashion: tracksuit bottoms and elasticated cotton trousers. Does that suit you, sir? It certainly doesn't suit me!

Harry Mount is author of How England Made The English .

Popular posts from this blog

Study Abroad USA, College of Charleston, Popular Courses, Alumni

Thinking for Study Abroad USA. School of Charleston, the wonderful grounds is situated in the actual middle of a verifiable city - Charleston. Get snatched up by the wonderful and customary engineering, beautiful pathways, or look at the advanced steel and glass building which houses the School of Business. The grounds additionally gives students simple admittance to a few major tech organizations like Amazon's CreateSpace, Google, TwitPic, and so on. The school offers students nearby as well as off-grounds convenience going from completely outfitted home lobbies to memorable homes. It is prepared to offer different types of assistance and facilities like clubs, associations, sporting exercises, support administrations, etc. To put it plainly, the school grounds is rising with energy and there will never be a dull second for students at the College of Charleston. Concentrate on Abroad USA is improving and remunerating for your future. The energetic grounds likewise houses various

Best MBA Online Colleges in the USA

“Opportunities never open, instead we create them for us”. Beginning with this amazing saying, let’s unbox today’s knowledge. Love Business and marketing? Want to make a high-paid career in business administration? Well, if yes, then mate, we have got you something amazing to do!   We all imagine an effortless future with a cozy house and a laptop. Well, well! You can make this happen. Today, with this guide, we will be exploring some of the top-notch online MBA universities and institutes in the USA. Let’s get started! Why learn Online MBA from the USA? Access to More Options This online era has given a second chance to children who want to reflect on their careers while managing their hectic schedules. In this, the internet has played a very crucial in rejuvenating schools, institutes, and colleges to give the best education to students across the globe. Graduating with Less Debt Regular classes from high reputed institutes often charge heavy tuition fees. However onl

Sickening moment maskless 'Karen' COUGHS in the face of grocery store customer, then claims she doesn't have to wear a mask because she 'isn't sick'

A woman was captured on camera following a customer through a supermarket as she coughs on her after claiming she does not need a mask because she is not sick.  Video of the incident, which has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter alone, allegedly took place in a Su per Saver in Lincoln, Nebraska according to Twitter user @davenewworld_2. In it, an unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of the customer recording her. Scroll down for video An unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of a woman recording her A woman was captured on camera following a customer as she coughs on her in a supermarket without a mask on claiming she does not need one because she is not sick @chaiteabugz #karen #covid #karens #karensgonewild #karensalert #masks we were just wearing a mask at the store. ¿ o