Personally I have nothing against Mr. John Fetterman, I just don’t want to have C-SPAN footage where the Senate looks like a locker room. Chuck Schumer should never have relaxed the dress code. This is the video footage that is going to be recorded for posterity and it will look like all of our leaders operate from either a locker room or a frat house.
I Hated Suites Too
I grew up blue collar on a farm. Hated suits. Really hated the feeling of a tie around my neck. Then again, my dress clothes were the cheap stuff from K-Mart or the mostly polyester clothes from J.C. Penny or Sears. While the Stafford Collection Oxfords were great and would wear like iron, there was no way to feel comfortable in the other stuff no matter how it fit.
Wanting a good paying IT job meant wearing at least a tie and usually a suit. (Wanting to work in the Senate should mean the same thing.) As my income increased it meant a suit everyday. That’s when chain stores like The Suitery and Kuppenheimer had a hay day. All of these IT workers needed suits and the cheap suits from there looked better than the cheap suits from other places. They didn’t last though. Seemed like a dozen or so trips to the dry cleaners and the suits were shit.
Personally I don’t think I’ve ever bought a suit from Men’s Warehouse, but that is what became of the two aforementioned chains if memory serves.
You’re gonna like the way you look
their slogan once upon a time
Just not for long.
High Maintenance Girl Friends
Every guy needs to date a high maintenance girl during his youth. For God’s sake don’t marry them or knock one up! That will give you a short miserable life of extreme poverty. You need to date them when you are young and just starting to really earn money to learn how to dress better.
Don’t get me wrong, your mother taught you how to put on a suit, it was just a cheap one because they had a budget. She taught you where to buy clothes on a budget. The one thing you need to learn from a high maintenance girl friend is where to buy good clothes.
Marshall Fields
Until I dated my first high maintenance girl, I had never set foot in a Marshall Fields. The chain used to have these high end coffee and chocolates days where high maintenance women dragged their men in to buy suits. The women would sit there being pampered while ordering the men to try on seemingly endless quantities of suits. If you didn’t buy the suits they told you to, you could forget about sex that evening and probably the entire weekend.
Just when you thought it was over.
Now we have to get you a couple of shirts and matching ties
For all of the young guys reading this, Marshall Fields doesn’t exist anymore but some other store will dust off the high end coffee and chocolates thing. You will not be done shopping until it’s time to take them out for supper. Resign yourself to that fact and negotiate a stop at Victoria’s Secrets to get her something you want to see her in. That’s how it works.
The Difference a Good Suit Makes
Hopefully you get out of a high maintenance relationship before it ruins your life and after you learn wear to buy a good suit. A good suit is more comfortable than your favorite jeans. Good suits wear like iron and survive hundreds of trips to dry cleaners. Honestly the only reason I don’t still have those suits is they stopped fitting.
Once you have a closet of good suits the only time you put on locker room attire is at home or when you are working out.
Manny’s
After your high maintenance lady you need to find your own suit place. I was lucky, I found Manny’s.
133 W Roosevelt Rd Villa Park, IL 60181
I haven’t purchased a suit in about a decade. Still have 6-10 suits that came from Manny’s. They still fit and still look great. The last couple times I bought suits I was out of state and ordered them from SuitItaly.com. I didn’t make that a link because they don’t exist anymore. Fantastic quality suits though.
Mr. Fetterman, you need to go to Manny’s. Big and Tall, he has it all.
The Laws of Buying a Suit
- Never buy a trendy suit
- Classic suits are called classic for a reason
- Double breasted never goes out of style
Hopefully that image never fades from the Internet. Let it serve as a cautionary tale. Sadly, these were two of the better looking leisure suits of the day. I kid you not.
Every generation seems to come up with an unfortunate “trendy” suit. The Zuit Suit was another one.
Laugh all you want, it’s been updated and they are selling again.
Double Breasted never goes out of style.
They even look good on big guys.
Final Suit Tips
Always get pleated pants
Straight suit pants, especially after the suit has been to the dry cleaners, show the whites of your pockets when you sit down. Be sure to have them cuffed. It’s a little bitty thing but yields a much cleaner look at the shoe.
Center button suits suck
I have some too. Even a great center button suit that feels great sucks. Two button, three button, four button, doesn’t matter. They are cut so you can’t sit down with the jacket buttoned. Guys end up doing this shit.
It’s not a good look even for a model with chiseled abs. For a dude with a gut it’s freaking ugly. Notice how the pants are pulling and stretching with his hand in pocket? Pleated pants don’t do that. If you are going to do this “only one button” shit, you have to wear the vest. Double breasted suits are cut so you can sit down.
He just should have gotten cuffs too.
It’s Not Just the Locker Room Dress Code
Hey, if they want a casual Friday where a nice dress shirt and jeans are allowed, fine. As long as people aren’t wearing gym shoes it won’t look bad on camera. If they need casual Monday instead of Friday because they are all flying in late, so be it, just don’t wear locker room clothes.
It’s the locker room behavior.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote that the “dress code is one of society’s standards that set etiquette and respect for our institutions” and said Mr Fetterman was lowering the bar.
BBC World News
Respect for our institutions mean you sit through the State of the Union speech, applauding where you feel necessary and some mild low volume dissent when something is truly offensive. This shit is not allowed! To the supposed Republicans expressing outrage or disgust about it ruining an institution I say this. Not one of you had the balls to Will Smith bitch slap these two at the State of the Union then have security throw them out.
The theater hosting Beatlejuice has higher standards for both dress and conduct.
Obviously these girls are not the kind you take home to meet mother.