Vintage Menswear Article
I recently got into expanding my clothing repertoire – before I was mostly a shirt and jeans kind of guy. Naturally, the next step from there was to get into suits and ties, as all men need to dress more formally on occasion. Once I figured out my general suit fit, I started down leveling a bit in between suits and t shirts to something in between – blazers, sport coats, more collared shirts but more business casual than wedding attire. I would basically confer with AI models to determine different aesthetic styles and recommend brands, as well as submitting photos to determine my fit.
One thing I learned in the course of all this is how bountiful America’s vintage clothing market is for suits/blazers/sport coats due to a couple of interesting factors. Mainly, for the boomer generation and prior, there was an expectation that men would be suited up all the time – that was a general clothing convention. This meant there was a giant market for producing these types of clothes – at one point there was a gigantic suit manufacturing industry in the US, from names like Hickey Freeman, Hart Schaffner Marx, Southwick, Oxxford, and so forth, with tailors being extremely plentiful around the nation. As American clothing trends have continued slouching towards casualwear-Bethlehem and as the last generation of “mainstream formal wear as daily wear” retire/pass (boomers), a huge pool of high quality and cheap (relative to material and hours of work labor put into it) suits/sport coats/blazers becomes increasingly available for Americans to thrift.
This pool is the sartorial equivalent of fossil fuels that we can harness to improve our formal wear fits, as most Americans are dressing increasingly casual, meaning this pool is only tapped by a small populace, relatively. This is not a renewable resource – many of the manufacturers of these vintage suits and blazers/sports coats have gone out of business as American manufacturers fall to cheaper manufacturing countries. What does this mean for the average American? Now is as good of a time as ever to pick up a high quality suit on the cheap, provided you know your measurements. You can get a clothing measuring tape and have a friend/family member help get your size (First and foremost, your shoulder width – this is probably the single most important measure for getting a good fit on a suit jacket/blazer), then browse eBay/Poshmark/what have you for suits on the cheap – just track by chest size as a general proxy, then review the shoulder width of the suit to make sure it’s a good fit – there isn’t too much leeway in shoulder measurements, and it’s expensive and labor intensive to tailor the shoulders specifically. Provided you follow these guidelines, you should be able to find some fantastic deals for a fraction of a new suit, and at better quality, too. I picked up a charcoal Oxxford 1220 suit for a little over 100 dollars shipped – pair that with some lightly used black cap toe Allen Edmonds I snagged for 70 bucks, that covers weddings, business formal, and any other formal occasions. Insane deal for a fully canvassed suit with dozens of hand tailored hours put into the detailing.
Note: if you do purchase vintage suits, you’ll very likely need to get it tailored to your specifications – that’s expected, and something you should factor into your cost pricing as well. I didn’t, because I haven’t taken my suit to get it fitted properly yet. But off the rack, it’s still relatively serviceable – it’s just important to do so as fit is the biggest upgrade you can make to looking good in a suit. It doesn’t matter how expensive the suit is, if it’s ill fitting. Get it tailored.