About a month ago, I went to Macy’s and bought a new black suit. (Partly because a relative by marriage is in ill health and I would not be surprised if there’s a funeral in the next year or so.) I think I already have a black tie and black shoes. I just need to get a couple of white dress shirts to complete the set.
I don’t think I’ve ever owned a suit in my life. I’ve certainly never had a job where wearing one was expected. These days (and for the last 25 years) my work clothes consist of clean black jeans, Skechers and an array of nuclear Aloha shirts. For weddings, funerals and such I wear a quieter shirt.
Same thing happened with the Nude Swimming at the Y thread. Until Spoons and I got in a dispute with a new poster, who said he was a gym coach. He got banned as a troll and the thread locked.
Google is why we can’t have nice things.
Getting back to the thread OP, I can’t remember when I last owned a pair of blue jeans. Jacket and tie, office and home!
Certain threads are troll/spammer magnets.
Stop right there! No one in management saw the clusterfuck this would become at this point?
Guess not.
From what I remember the vast majority of the complaints were younger people asking if they could wear revealing swimsuit bottoms.
The work rule was “the back of the bottom must cover the entire buttocks” but so many people basically wanted to wear ones that either revealed a lot of cheek in the back or literally wanted to wear thong style swimsuit bottoms.
There were a couple of swimsuit tops denial too which were the most ludicrous ones, somebody asked if they could wear nipple pasties to the water park because “Bikini tops irritated their skin”.
It seems like half my work has never gone to a water park before.
I misread this as “team bodily functions.”
You wear a jacket and tie while at home? Like, in your off-work hours?
I would be deeply suspicious of any job offer at that company based on this story alone. If they’re that stupid and short-sighted about something a blind guy could see coming from a mile away, can they run a business?
I think onw issuebwould be that most people own one or two bathibg suits, and its entirely possible that neither would fully cover the butt. A lot of women’s suits don’t. Bathing suits are not cheap and easy to buy: the cheap option is likley not going to be flattering, and flattering really matters in a bathing suit. Most people vary in size top and bottom, along with torso length, and all those impact fit. Plus, weirdly, bathing suit shopping season is March-June, at the latest. By July, the selection is much decreased.
So yeah, the idea of having to spend a Saturday hitting multiple stores trying to find a suit that covers top and bottom appropriately and ending up paying $80 for a suit you dont like just to spend time with coworkers would be pretty annoying.
Some years are tankini years and it might be easier, but its mostly one pieces again.
Which kinda begs the question - how many decades ago were you a little sprout 
? There is a lot of received wisdom like this that many of us glom onto, but cultures do change as the generations roll past.
In 1950 hat-wearing (male and female) was, if not universal, at least very much the norm. Increasingly by the 1960’s that was no longer a thing - looking at crowd photos from the two eras can be a little startling in that regard. Even at funerals and weddings, the two universal occasions for fancier dress when I was a child a half-century ago, full suits with ties are increasingly the domain of the middle-aged/old.
I think I still have a couple of ties somewhere, but I haven’t worn one in a couple of decades. I no longer even have a nice jacket that fits my less svelte modern self that well and those are slowly drifting away as a requirement even in fine dining these days. It also helps my antiquated conscience (must look presentable as a sign of respect!) that I assiduously avoid weddings and funerals. I embrace the new casual America - long may it reign!
I learned from this board that Peak Suit was most recently in the 1990s. No idea if it has been long enough for that particular dress code to rise again.
BTW it also depends on which culture and where in the world. I narrowly avoided a faux pas where I what I thought was an unremarkable shirt turned out to be considered dressy.
I don’t see it coming back, at least not in my lifetime.
Suits have never gone away entirely in the wardrobes of some men – even those who are not required to wear them at work – as there has always been a subset of men who, for various reasons, are interested in fashion, looking good, and dressing well. There’s probably a high overlap among those young men, and use of expensive hair care products, facial care products, etc.
But, for the rest of American men, who wore and owned suits in the past, not because they liked suits, but because there were social and business expectations around wearing them, that ship has sailed, as social norms about what one wears in public have steadily and consistently grown more and more casual over the past 30+ years. I don’t think that “1989 me” could have pictured it being perfectly “normal” for people to go to the store, go to restaurants, etc. in what is essentially pajamas and slippers.
I remember an article about the first steps towards casual dress taken by IBM (which was well-known for a conservative dress code) in their Armonk, New York headquarters thirty years ago.
On Jonathan D. Bick’s first day as a salesman for I.B.M. 17 years ago [1978, in other words], he wore what he remembers as a gray suit, a button-down white shirt, a “sincere tie” and Gucci loafers.
His boss looked him over and thanked him for wearing a suit but pointedly said: “Why did you wear your bedroom slippers to work?” The boss, he remembers, told him to take the rest of the day off and shop for a pair of wingtips.
Oh, quite a few! I’m well aware that standards change, although I do still wear suits to things like weddings and funerals. Fortunately, I am well known to be an old fuddy-duddy, so no one thinks it’s unusual.
Just finished making a nice shepherd’s pie and popped it in the oven.
Took my jacket off during the prep phase so it wouldn’t get any grease stains. Still wearing dress slacks, dress shirt, and tie.
I enjoy wearing a tie. As a concession to the age, I often wear a jacket with black jeans. Since Covid, you see as many jackets without ties as with them.
I was in a meeting with a buncha lawyers a while ago.
Of the 7 male lawyers present:
- 1 was wearing a three piece tweed suit, with tie. Very natty.
- 1 was wearing a two-piece suit, with tie;
- 3 (me included) were wearing dress slacks, jacket and tie;
- 1 was wearing dress slacks and shirt, with tie, but no jacket, which he must have left in his office once he got down to work for the day;
- 1 rebel was wearing dress slacks and an unbuttoned shirt, no tie (Boo! What happened to professional standards!?!)
I work for county government. So we have lawyers, commissioners, county managers etal. never seen anyone wearing a tie. Maybe a sport coat once in a blue moon.
The same goes for the population of the county. If you see a suit and tie, there is gonna be a funeral or a wedding. But people don’t necessarily get dressed up for those either.
We’re mountain folks. Cold weather/snow mountain folks. We are practical.
Shocked. What do you wear to a wedding or funeral if you don’t own a suit and tie? Now, I appreciate we might skew more formal in the UK, but SURELY these events are ones which still assume certain standards!
I think that bit about suits being for the middle-aged or old has a lot to do with location/social class/culture/something other than age. . Almost every guy I know in their 20/30s has at least one suit (even the ones who wear various uniforms to work) but that could be because I live in NYC. They don’t wear them to wakes and maybe not to funerals but definitely to weddings.