I recently watched a “Bones” episode in which Booth (an FBI special agent) goes out in a fairly dirty marshy crime scene and mentions he is wearing a $1200 suit.
This made me wonder about people and suits. Booth does not seem like a high-success rich guy that exclusively wears $1200 suits. I mean, he works for the FBI!
Note, I do not want this to turn into a “Bones” discussion.
Here is my main question: Do you think it is strange for someone of an “upper middle class” profession to wear something like a $1200 suit?
To me, anyone that makes less than a Stock Broker on wall street would never wear something like that. Am I off base? Is everyone around me wearing expensive suits and I just don’t know it?
It’s above what I’d consider normal for an upper-middle class guy, but some people like to look really sharp on occasion. If you hang in the right social circles I imagine you’d get your money’s worth out of it.
On a similar note, I wonder how middle-class people in professions or workplaces that require suits pull it off. Do they struggle to buy a wardrobe of $500 suits, get away with cheap or thrift store suits, or just own a couple of suits that they wear over and over again? Cleaning expenses must also add up.
Were I an FBI special agent whose daily work required me to report to random crimes scenes with unknown conditions, the only way I’d wear a $1200 dollar suit to work would be if it was my worst suit.
That said, some people are far more fashion oriented than others, and far more willing to spend large amounts of their income on clothing than others.
An FBI special agent starts at around 64K, plus possibly a 22K relocation bonus to go to DC. He’s been around long enough that it wouldn’t surprise me if he had a few nice suits.
Were I in that situation, I’d struggle to buy two or three at first, then gradually work buying a new suit every year into my wardrobe budget just like I work buying two or three new short-sleeved shirts every spring into it. After a couple of years, I’d have enough to cycle through, and to enable the one(s) in crappiest condition to be discarded. (I’m not in that situation. I currently own–precisely–one suit, and it will be replaced the next time I go job hunting.)
But if you already live there, you just get 64K. Considering your average 1 bedroom apartment in DC is probably 2K a month and overall high cost of living there, 64K doesn’t go that far.
So far, no one here has claimed that they even own a $1200 suit. I am guessing it is fairly rare.
I haven’t understood that. Is looking down on a woman who wears the same outfit within the same 2-4 weeks something that women do among themselves? I’ve never witnessed gossiping like that done.
Mid-range women’s suits cost about $300 off the rack. I never pay full price though-- most of my suits cost in the $75 - $125 range, and they are all either Anne Klein, Ann Taylor, or Tahari. (The only brands that fit me). New York is covered in places to buy off-price designer clothing (Century 21, Syms, Loehman’s… to name a few which sell a lot of suits) as well as the omnipresent sales at Macy’s and Lord & Taylor.
$64k doesn’t actually get you that far in the DC area, especially if you have to live inside the Beltway (even outside of G-Town). Knock that down to about $40k relative the Midwest, and factor in the long hours/high stress nature of law enforcement which is not going to give you time to spend weekends bargain shopping.
Also, I can get non-top label bespoke suits tailored for $600-$800 that are indistinguishable from Armani, Brooks, Hackett, et cetera, save for the label. Spending $1200 on a men’s suit is paying for the label, not the fit and appearance.
But women’s clothes are less expensive, even for a greater complexity of tailoring. Part of that it the quality of materials–most women’s clothes don’t seem to be designed to survive ten or twenty year’s service–but also just the market; women buy vastly more clothes than men, and in far more variety of cut, color, and style. It’s easy for me to spend $800 on a good quality dinner jacket and pants (and another $200 or so on braces, cummerbund, and silk tie, with a couple difference sets for variety) and live out of that for twenty years provided I don’t gain an unalterable amount of weight; it seems to be nearly unheard of for a woman to wear the same dress to an annual function twice.
An FBI guy wearing a $1200 suit? I suspect he’s going to be called by the OIG if he shows up to work dressed that snazzy on a regular basis. I understand that they’re pretty touchy since the whole Aldrich Ames fiasco. And most of those guys wear $300 ready-to-wear suits from Men’s Warehouse or somesuch, and probably rubber-soled shoes to boot. Mr. Fashion Palette is going to stick out like a Marine at a Toastmasters meeting.
Sales. Macy’s runs awesome sales almost constantly. My SO wears suits to work. We recently got a couple suits, alterations, shirts and ties… with sale prices and a Macy’s card, we wound up at 70% off. So, really, a $1200 suit isn’t all that bad.
I was thinking something like that as well. I have several things that I couldn’t have paid retail for and got on discount. (Armani, Valentino and the like)
I make less than that here in LA and could buy a $1200 suit if I really wanted to. I just don’t like spending a lot on clothes. Though if I needed suits for work, which I very well might after a promotion or so, I would probably get at least one high end one.
I agree that it’s unlikely that very many FBI special agents run around regularly in such things, but I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility.
Interesting what people think is important. A few months ago there was a thread on how much people pay for watches. A lot of people said they pay $500 and up for a watch. I was dismissed because I said I go to the local CVS and buy for $10 a watch that keeps perfect time. Yet a lot of people think $1200 for a suit is extravagant. Unlike watches there is a tremendous difference between a $300 suit and a $1200 suit, in how it fits, how it looks, the compliments you receive, etc. My goal is a $3000 custom-made suit of Italian silk. (I can dream.)
I imagine your average woman who has been in the workforce for a bit has several thousand dollars worth of clothes- it’s easy to spend $300 on seasonal shopping and most people do some shopping in between.
I have a dinner jacket that was probably somewhere around $1,500 when new, and a couple of suits that would probably be in the $1,000 when they were new off-the-rack…but I got them at a vintage store for fractions of that and spent the money to have them altered by a skilled tailor.
Which makes me imagine this:Michael: You know, GOB, you might want to start acting like the President. You’re beginning to alienate some of the employees.
Gob: Yeah, like the CEO has to worry about alienating the employees.
Narrator: In fact, GOB had started to alienate some of the employees.
Gob: [in the break room] The worst that could happen is that I could spill coffee all over this $3,000 suit. Come on.
[in the elevator]
Gob: Yeah, the guy wearing the $4,000 suit is holding the elevator for the guy who doesn’t make that in four months. Come on.
[in the bathroom]
Gob: Yeah, like I’m going to take a whiz through this $5,000 suit. Come on.
Bones’ parsec-level distance from reality aside, people who work in the field dress like they work in the field. Bureaucrats dress like bureaucrats. In my stint in DC I worked directly with hundreds of agents and hundreds more civil service employees in other capacities. Not close working relationships with most, but more than cursory contact. Clearly there are exceptions (though I never came across any), but agents’ suits were meant to look professional and be comfortable and functional. There are some that cost more, but the expense was for different, stronger stitching or gusseted panels that allowed movement without compromising looks.
Again, there are exceptions, but it’s a bit preposterous to suggest that someone who works at a level that is likely to put them in scenarios that are risky to their clothes is making enough to not only purchase a $1,200 suit in the first place, but also to replace it three or four times a year as it gets stained, torn, or otherwise compromised.