I have a different body but a similar relationship to it as the author. My wife is very stylish and often wears striking jewellery. She gets a lot of compliments and doesn't have to work hard to be at ease socially, whereas for the most part I'd be happy to pass through the world unseen. We've had some modest financial success of late, and I'm resolved to being kinder to myself but also taking myself a little more seriously. I think it's easy to write off fashion as something laboured and fake and innately suspect, especially when you're an introvert and a bit of a nerd living the life of the mind. But I've come to accept that my body has value, a voice of its own, and is part of me that I can't and don't want to be rid of. I'm not really ready for tailored clothing (and I flatter myself it'd be wasteful when I lose all the weight) but I've started dressing better, sports jackets instead of hoodies, shirts instead of t-shirts. For the first time in my life I own more than two pairs of shoes. I am sure I would still look shambolic to anyone with an eye for the details (I can pull off dishevelled academic better than Ivy Style) but I feel so much more confident and relaxed. I no longer feel like I've written off half of myself, and I like the whole a lot more because of that. It was wonderful to read Gary's journey in a similar direction.
I stopped wearing shirts except for semi-formal dinner occasions once or twice a year. I don't want fancy dress pants, I don't want pants with belts at all. I want something soft, slightly elastic around the waist that I can lounge around in, that doesn't feel like it's restrictive of movement.
I dress for comfort, but I do like variety and some colors, not just gym clothes.
This is a horrible problem because the modern approach to clothes production is retarded.
Formal isn't comfortable. Everyday fast fashion isn't comfortable and it's either pointlessly frilly over designed garbage that tries too hard to make a statement or it's generic in the extreme for faceless drones made only for utility values. The third category is a more interesting cut but unsatisfactory quality
Well made formal clothes are the most comfortable you'll wear. There is some mental discomfort for a while depending on your mindset because, at least for me, I was stuck thinking fancier clothes required fancier demeanor and attitude? Not sure I'm bailing the feeling here but it does go away eventually. I ultimately did drop the everyday formal wear though because well made stuff was expensive and Im pretty active and found myself with a lot of rips and stains on expensive clothing items.
Modern dress pants are often too tight, but with well fitting dress pants it's like you are not wearing any pants at all. For example classic design features like pleats provide extra comfort when sitting down. I don't think I ever seen jeans with such features.
And the lining! Temperature permitting, of course, but having a satin lining to your soft wool pants? It's not far off from pajamas. Of course it's often with some other clothes that are a little unpajamalike, like a stiff collar and a jacket, but a pair of half-lined pants are extremely comfortable.
Wool doesn't have to be warm! Tropical weights of wool are very light. But yes, lined pants are definitely warmer than without. Definitely less warm than a suit jacket, though.
I touched a clump of Australian wool, and noted how superior my South American sheep was to its antipodean cousin.
He touched a clump of hard wearing medium or strong merino wool; ultrafine and superfine merino come in softer and finer than his 21 micron South American sheep.
And a not insignificant fraction of it comes from one region, Hamilton in Victoria:
“ Sheep grazing and agriculture are the primary industries in the surrounding shire, the area producing as much as 15% of Australia's total wool clip.”
Suits like carpets have to be a compromise between fineness and longevity. 21 is probably as fine as weaves strong twill suitable for a modern suit. It's a fucktonne finer than the Harris Tweed in my ten euro jacket I got in cliqnancourt.
I’m also obligated to laugh at that 21. However New Zealand’s wool industry is a showdown of what it once was, and unfortunately that’s come at the expense of our lakes and rivers. Thanks dairy.
Not to mention the other Antipodean (New Zealand) marino which goes down to 11 microns. 18.5 microns is considered the premium suiting quality and there is not much point in going finer.
It's a real shame that bespoke tailoring has all but died out. These days you have to live in (or near) the largest cities in the world, or financial hubs if you want bespoke service that is local.
Most tailoring houses do travel around, offering trunk shows and such.
I was lucky enough that I had a close relative that worked as a tailor back in the 50s and 60s, so from the first suit I wore was actually a bespoke piece.
When I moved away, and entered the professional workforce, I soon discovered that bespoke suits started at $4k-$5k. I settled with a reputable shop that did made-to-measure for a third, and was happy with the results.
I don't really wear suits (and tailored clothing) too much these days. The world has moved much more into casual and comfy clothes, and the sartorial world is mostly reserved for the hobbyists or wealthy people in conservative (work) fields.
But, still, wearing a full set of perfectly tailored suit, shirt, and shoes feels nothing short but incredible. There should be nothing uncomfortable about it - which is the general critique for people not wanting to wear a suit.
"These days you have to live in (or near) the largest cities in the world"
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by bespoke tailoring. I've found small shops that will do custom work. They are somewhat rare in the US, just like custom shoe makers, but they do exist outside of the largest cities.
Also you can get a 3 piece suit custom made in SE asia for $1-500, custom shoes for $50-$100. If your goal is to have a custom wardrobe a plane ticket would save you thousands.
A lot of these guys travel - they book a hotel conference room, you go and pick your fabrics, they take your measurements, and you get your suit in the mail.
"Also, anything you bring back that you did not have when you left the United States must be "declared." For example, you would declare alterations made in a foreign country to a suit you already owned,"
I imagine myself driving across the country, and arriving at a small town to get gas and lunch. As I eat at the local diner, I become aware that everyone in the town is dressed exceptionally well, better than I am in fact, including the two homeless people outside, sitting in the street.
Turns out this small down of 400 people has such a tailor, and no Walmart, and so even the poorest are dressed quite well, with perfectly fitted suites and clothes.
Or (and I hate how cynical I've become) "How can I justify buying an outrageously expensive custom-made suit?" Oh yeah, I'll write an article about it, ha ha.
On a less derisive note, a friend and I were riding the JR line in Tokyo when my friend pointed to the hand stitching on the suit of the salaryman (or not? ChatGPT tells me "yakuin" refers to the moire powerful decision-making company employees) standing next to us.
That was a cool thing about public transportation where even the high-flyers travel with gaijin tourists.
I think that we are at a "generational inflection point".
I did the whole "it's cool to wear t-shirts to work" startup thing, and now that I'm a little older and the stakes are a bit higher in the office, It does feel a bit disrespectful to look "unserious".
So it's probably a perennial moment: ppl getting older. Maybe I'm boring now.
(Also, died at loss in your footer, and the MD timeline of discovery is cool -- submit it here!)
I was all about t-shirts until I had kids. When we went out on restaurant-night (Friday) I started to see myself in how my kids would perceive me — or how they might compare their father to others.
> Gotta say I wanted to keep reading. How good is Atlantic? Maybe I should sub
The Atlantic is fantastic and you should subscribe. You might be put off by the tone of some of their political pieces, which tends towards old-fashioned centre right. But as a leftie, I think that a lot of them are insightful even though I regularly disagree with the authors and in any case their long-form articles are excellent. The writing is good and the research is thorough.
The writing held me to the end. I think their long form apolitical stuff is amazing.
People disagree about the political/editorial, I think it's classic American centrist but right wing see it as leftist, and left wing see it as establishment.
I totally would wear $20,000 of well made wool 6ply, leather and cotton. Like the author, I'd do it on somebody else's dime. My forays into Japan align strongly to the sense there are many obsessive mercantilist specialists there. The guy with a 2 meter wide stall selling exclusively high end pentode valves in the old akehabera market comes to mind.
I spent a brief time in Beijing with a co worker watching them being fitted for a high end suit. The fabric was just amazing. They keep the salvage showing out on the roll so you can see where it's woven be it Milan or Scotland. I think that experience is why this article resonates: that and getting a charity store "demob" suit recut to fit me in London in the eighties. 1946 vintage double breasted with a slubby thick stripe, £20 to buy and £120 to have fitted (it was destroyed by moths in Brisbane 20 years later)
My highlight of that Beijing trip was buying a beautiful "pleather" designer jacket for my son from the cheaper, fraudulent end of the market. Very nicely made, he wore it into the ground. If you walk away from the stall without bargaining the market trader women pinch you to teach you a lesson. Painful.
It's Gary Shteyngart, you don't have to sub to the Atlantic to read him. I've zero interest in his late mid-life hobbies of watches and suits but the dude can write. His fiction is fun, for those who are into that sort of thing.
I've zero interest in diving into new (to me) fiction right now but his late mid-life hobbies made for short, enjoyable reading. We're all different, and as Gary might say, you do you.
If you do (like me) like magazine style writing about obsessions, then William Gibson writes well about it regarding ebay bidding on watches but perhaps you prefer reading his books more too?
I don't think I even knew Gibson did random hobby writing, no! I've seen the occasional pic of his drip on twitter - I will definitely not be one but it's nice to know it's at least possible to be a dapper old man dressed in something other than formalwear or whatever was in style in his youth.
I desperately want to deny "dress for success" ever mattterd to me but I'd very much be lying. I've worn suits to fit in, I've worn jackets to project an image, I've dressed down to make a political point. Now, just wear clothes which are comfortable and appropriate to circumstances which admits circumstances can change.
Formal wear has consumed itself. We need sumptuary laws back.
It's interesting because the left hates the Atlantic because of its neoliberal, capitalist-class owners that spawned things like 20 years of cheerleading for wars in the middle east and hiring David Frum "axis of evil" types to be their senior editor.
And the right hates them because of its puritanical coast-obsessed effeminacy that reads like a gossip paper with a few more fiver-dollar words.
But still they've lasted 150 years now so must be doing something right.
This was a wonderful read and matched some of my own experiences with becoming more familiar with mens fashion allowing me to create an outward reflection of myself that helped me to build up a respect for my own body and a more general sense of aesthetic I had previously lacked.
While I don't have so fine a suit as the author, a few years back I had the pleasure of having a bespoke suit made and a set of shirts to accompany it. In many ways it was a life-altering experience for the better.
Still trying to finds words for this, but living in the San Francisco Bay Area and dealing with a lot of tech developers it is shocking how many people have great tattoos, great clothes, great jewelry, great accessories, and yet all it takes is a glance to see that they themselves have bodies atrophied by a lifetime of chair sitting and inactivity. Go for a walk and wear a ripped up tee and you might look better?
As a fellow short man, I will have to second his feeling at ease in Asian clothing stores.
Far more casual than the suit he describes, which obviously being made bespoke can be made anywhere (if I had the money, it’d have to be cifonelli in Paris) their repro sportswear is excellent and actually cut short enough not to drown the body.
Ha!, that’s interesting – my experience is exactly the opposite.
I will note my surprise when I learned that this was my preference!
I did have to find the right material to fit between me and the environment. I live in a cool climate but am always running a little too hot for indoors. For me the most comfortable clothing is a suit of medium-fine and somewhat “porous” wool. Very lightweight for the warmth it gives outside. Breathes well inside and I can take off the jacket to cool down. Lightweight shirt to be able to bleed off heat.
I do not at all enjoy wearing cotton or synthetic suits.
The fit is important of course. I’m blessed with haphazardly fitting well into off-the-shelf suits… if I can mix and match the pants one size up or down to the jacket. –It’s kind of random which way it goes.
Then I take a size smaller motorcycle gloves than the similarly-sized runway model would — and a size bigger dirt bike helmet. The reader will note that I’m not at all perfectly shaped :)
I think I’d feel better in something other than cotton but I haven’t come across anything. Just lucked out once when I needed a suit and grab the seemingly lightweight shirts off the rack; Have yet to get serious, you know?
Kmart suit Yes. But in general whole point of suit was comfort, just look at pictures of factory workers from 150 years ago, every single working man in a suit. Also google Van Damme suit kick
I wouldn't be able to relax for fear of damaging or soiling the suit. Cats, dogs, children, food, bushes and trees, mud, not spot-clean metro cars - everything is an enemy.
I have bought a number of tailored suits, albeit never bespoke.
Fitted worse than off-the-rack. I figured you need to keep adjusting the measurement at your tailor until you find the perfect fit, which is too much effort for me.
Or find an outstanding professional, which is just too expensive.
Ah yes, The Atlantic’s classic house style: 4,000 words of elegantly crafted prose designed to ensure that its upper-middle-class readership never has to grapple with the actual implications of their worldview losing ground. When meaningful left-wing political movements take a hit, we get long-form thought experiments about ‘new ideas in urbanism’ or ‘reassessing the Roman Empire’s fall’—anything but a serious analysis of why their side just lost.
The Atlantic doesn’t exist to challenge assumptions; it exists to soothe its audience with the sense that they’re still engaged in high-level intellectual discourse, even as real political momentum moves elsewhere. If an idea can be captured in a 20-minute TED Talk or a 5,000-word piece that doesn’t threaten a Netflix subscription, it’s safe to discuss. If it suggests that power or money might shift in ways they don’t like—well, then, let’s talk about stoicism or AI ethics instead.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
