I have worn a suit all my working life, nearly 20 years now, and I estimate
that I have owned perhaps 20 suits in that time. In my wardrobe at the
moment there are only four, not including black tie: two work suits and my
two best (both bought for weddings — one mine, the other a friend’s).
Four suits is about the bare minimum for most men. Friends and colleagues
usually own at least two more. I have needed a new suit for a while — my
fawn “summer” one is criss-crossed with pen marks and needs to be replaced.
These are my criteria for buying a new suit:
I want to be able to wear it to work at least three days a week without
(female) colleagues noticing (in a bad way).
It must not scare people but it must be stylish.
It must be possible to buy a second pair of trousers with it.
This is a cast iron way of making a suit last and getting value for money.
Choosing a new suit — even in these days of more relaxed dress codes at work
— is still the most important style decision most men make regularly. You
can, of course, spend thousands on the top fashion brands and bespoke, but I
reckon that a couple of hundred quid is a reasonable outlay. So here is my
guide to buying a great suit for less than £200.
For my search, I teamed up with Nicola Copping, who researches and writes the
times2 Dress Code for men. We started at Marks & Spencer. This was
partly because they used to do great suits and then didn’t, but now seem to
have got back in the game. The main evidence for this is the Bryan Ferry
advertisement. No one should underestimate the power that advertising has
over the style choices of the ordinary man.
The Bryan Ferry chalk pinstripe suit costs £199 and another pair of trousers
is £79. Officially it is a Timothy Everest suit in the Autograph range. It
looks great. It has a slim, modern cut to the waist of the jacket that nips
in and updates the potentially tired pinstripe. It is well made — in China,
using Chinese fabric — with an understated lining and a double vent.
The trousers have a generous-ish cut and I immediately felt comfortable in
them. The Ferry suit was going to be hard to beat. M&S’s bestselling
suit is the £129 “machine-washable” in dullish grey. It too looked pretty
good on, but I would always hesitate to buy a suit that you do not have to
dry clean — the leap of faith is too great.
On to Next. Being the age I am (40), I bought many of my early suits in Next.
I can’t think why now, and as we stepped into the Oxford Street store I was
hit not by nostalgia but by the urge to turn around. David Gray was playing
on the sound system and the suits on offer — for example £150 for a grey
wool, slim-fit affair that felt like a cardigan — did not make me want to
stay to hear more.
We also checked out River Island, Reiss, Zara, and several specialist and
non-specialist menswear stores with little luck. None had anything for less
than £200 that stood out from the crowd. I inspected but could not bring
myself to try on the suits at Tesco and Asda. They were horrible. I had
also, earlier, gone searching online, including the Boden website. I decided
that while it is fine to order socks online and perhaps shirts and jeans,
ordering a suit is still too big a deal.
Now to the visit I was looking forward to the most. Whisper it, but Paul Smith
has a man’s sale shop (25 Avery Row W1K 4AX; 020-7493 1287) with lovely
clothes at big discounts.There was nothing for less than £200 — but there
was a lovely pin-check suit in navy blue reduced from £450 to £299. Quality
is a given with Paul Smith; less certain is the fit. The 40in-chest
pin-check jacket fitted perfectly but the narrow trousers with a 32in waist
were smply too tight. It is pot luck if you find a suit that works for you —
it is a sales shop with limited stock and they cannot swap trousers and
jackets. Alas, I found nothing.
The last store we visited was Topman. My expectations were severely limited as
I was sure that they did not cater for anyone over 30. A scary stylist who
looked a little like Russell Brand looked after us. He was brilliant and, to
my surprise, so were the clothes. They were cheap but not in look or feel.
In particular a mod-style black suit with narrow collar, short jacket and
narrow trouser leg, completed with a floral shirt (£28) looked great — very
Paul Weller circa 1982. The price: just £90 for jacket and trousers.
So in the end it came down to Bryan Ferry v Paul Weller. Well, I bought both.
Ferry for the office and Weller for the office party, I suppose.
Finally, a top tip from Topman scary stylist. Double-breasted suits are on
their way back. What a nightmare.
Marks & Spencer Timothy Everest pure wool grey striped jacket, £120,
and pure-wool flat-front grey striped trousers, £79 (0845 3021234,
www.marksandspencer.com).
Topman London single-breasted black jacket, £60, and trousers, £30. Floral
shirt, £28 (0845 1214519, www.topman.com)
A tailor-made trail: measured in London, made in Kowloon
Despite years of searching, I have never found an off-the-peg suit that
fitted quite as it should. Consequently I have sat through weddings
painfully moved because otherwise lovely trousers were tight around the
upper thigh. I’ve sweated in interviews, keenly conscious of an ugly,
unprofessional bunching at the shoulders. I have also wasted hundreds of
pounds on suits that I’ve taken no pleasure in wearing.
Purchasing a suit tailored precisely to my specifications has always seemed
the obvious solution, but prices for Savile Row bespoke start at about
£1,800 — even if I had that cash to hand, I’d rather spend it on a holiday.
Another tailor, though, had caught my eye. You’ve probably seen him, too,
staring from his pleasingly unprofessional ads in the papers, Time magazine
and Private Eye. Hong Kong tailor Raja Daswani, star of the belligerent ads
for his company Raja Fashions, pours scorn on off-the-peg and scoffs at
Savile Row prices. He promises a full bespoke suit for as little as £179,
though the price depends on the material you choose.
Unable to tolerate my unloved selection of suits any longer, I decided to give
Raja a go. My first fitting was at the Sheraton hotel in Knightsbridge in
October. Reception directed me to a blandly appointed suite on the tenth
floor, piled with swatches of materials (they offer more than 20,000). I was
barely through the door when a gentleman named Terry took me under his wing.
First he established my requirements: two suits, both double-vented;
flat-fronted trousers, no turn-ups, two-buttoned. He tutted soothingly at my
catalogue of past frustrations, gasping at my treatment in Gieves last year
when I was dismissed as having “high shoulders”.
The measuring was quick but exact. The number on Terry’s tape measure as he
checked my waist was mildly alarming. Terry sensed my alarm. “Don’t worry,
sir. It’s a sign of good living,” he soothed. Hmmm. Terry then took digital
photographs of me as an added reference point for Raja’s cutters.
We moved on to materials. I chose high-quality Italian wool in dark grey and
dark navy. To counter this slightly sombre selection I gave my jackets jazzy
(but not too jazzy) purple and electric blue linings. Terry offered to throw
in a few shirts for free, so I choose some cottons for those. After 40
minutes, my appointment was over.
A month later a large package arrives from Kowloon. It is one of my suits,
which has been half-made by Raja’s 500-strong team of Chinese
sub-contractors. Back at the Sheraton a week later, and my first fitting is
conducted by no less than Raja Daswani himself, a cheery, portly man who regales
me with his spiel as he picks over my prototype suit. He takes no prisoners.
“At Savile Row you pay maybe £3,000 for a suit and many of them are so old
they can’t even stitch properly!”
Daswani makes more than 50,000 suits a year; he and his teams spend 180 days a
year on the road, travelling from hotel to five-star hotel and seeing
thousands of men in America and Britain. He is considering a move into
Russia. He will neither confirm nor deny the rumour that one of his clients
was Tony Blair.
Mr Daswani approves of my muted material selections, lamenting: “I’ve had
gentlemen in here who choose suits in pink or orange, but what can you do?”
An hour later my first fitting is complete. Two weeks on and my suits, each
of which has two pairs of trousers and for which I have paid £1,000, are
delivered. They are absolutely beautiful. They fit, although had they not,
Daswani’s team offer as many follow-up fittings as you need. I can’t
recommend Raja Fashions enough. The next time my eyes moisten at a friend’s
wedding, it will be for the right reasons.
To find out when Daswani is in your area, see www.raja-fashions.com
