Just out of curiosity, how much would a Hugo Boss or Armani suit, top of the line, cost?
Top of the line? $50,000. Yes, I’m serious :eek:
I think it’s easy to say “hey I can’t tell the difference between a $100 suit and a $2000 suit, so it’s a waste of money”.
But - I’ll bet most people have seen people looking good in a suit and many more people not looking good in a suit.
In a large part, that’s due to the suit. A well fitted suit can make out-of-shape people look really good. A cheap off-the-rack suit just hangs there and looks crap, and contributes to the perception that suits all look the same.
I do have to say though, it is convenient that most people can’t tell a difference, because some people would think less of you if they knew you wore $1200 suits.
It’s the clothing equivalent to walking up to a group of people and the first thing you say is “I’m a Mensa member.” You think highly of your appearance and you want everyone to know it.
If you are a crooked FBI agent (like John Connelly of Boston, now a resident of the Florida Dept. of Corrections), $1200 suits are nothing. Connelly was working for the Bulger Mob in Boston, collecting both an FBA salary and his mob paycheck.
For someone to be able to aware of the relative level of quality of a man’s suit and then to judge the wearer negatively on this is a pretty rare circumstance. People who are able to distinguish higher quality tailoring vs lesser quality tailoring are usually somewhat appreciative of the art involved in making the garment.
A 1,200 suit does not have quite the same obnoxious vibe as announcing you are a Mensa member, it's a lifestyle choice like people who might disdain a 1000 suit wearing Birkenstocks or Finn Comforts or Mephistos vs Payless shoes, or spending money on a Macbook, or a bicycle that costs more than $ 300. It’s always interesting the things people spend money on. What some people see as affectations others see as useful accessories.
I have known people who make $50,000 and wear suits over $1,000 bucks. Depends on what you like. Remember Harris from “Barney Miller.” 
Let’s look at it like this
Booth makes 64K and wears a $1,200 suit
$1,200 is 1.875% of the yearly salary (64K)
Now what if I made say $30,000. That means I’d have to buy a suit for $562.50. I just bought some suits at JC Penny and spent $250.00 for each one. That was about as cheap as I could get and still look like, well it wasn’t a "cheapo: suit
That means using the same percentage I’d have to make $13,333.33 a year that would be $6.41/hour. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 or $15,080.
So to earn the federal minimum wage and buy a suit for the same proportion of my income I’d have to spend $282.75
On a side note, my sister was an FBI agent and as a general rule the idea of an agent is to NEVER look out of place. So unless Booth was going to a place where he wouldn’t stand out in a $1,200 suit he wouldn’t wear one. I don’t know exactly what my sister did at the FBI, other than her title was an FBI agent, but she was making $50,000 a year back in 1980, so either the salaries didn’t go up much or she was WAY overpaid.
Go to Saks Fifth Avenue in NYC. They have a whole floor of high end suits for $1500 - up to $5000 or more - Ralph Lauren, Armani, Canali, Hicky Freeman, a bunch of expensive Italian shit I’ve never heard of. You can find expensive suits at Brooks Brothers as well.
As it happens, $1500 43R Canali suits pretty much fit me right off the rack. I only need to have the sleaves and pant legs hemmed (and maybe the crotch taken out;) ) And while a bit more expensive than Brooks Brothers, I think they are slimmer and more flattering for my build.
I wear suits almost every day and I work in a Midtown Manhattan consulting firm.
If you go to Neiman Marcus, you can get an almost custom-made Armani for $2-3K. That means you pick most of the details (the fabric, how many buttons, how many vents, etc.) but they’re still made with patterns that already exist in an Italian factory. It’s custom lite. They take 4-6 weeks (more in the summer, the factory shuts down) and your final fittings will be done by in-house people at NM, but they are built for you, to your specifications and they DO look better than off the rack suits.
My husband wears a suit every day and he likes Armani not because he’s a brand-whore, but because he’s a fat guy and they hide it the best.
I guess I might be one of the OP’s “average guys who wear expensive suits”.
But these days I don’t have to wear a suit at work every day, so mostly I wear jeans and a dress shirt. And it’s only those 5 or 6 days out of 30 that I have to worry about dressing up right.
Then, when I do have to take meetings, I prefer to look a little bit better than off the rack.
The last suit I got was from http://www.stevenhitchcock.co.uk/ and they did an excellent job - they know how to build a suit. It was about US$ 5000 but well worth it.
That’s about all the advice I can muster. Go well!
What’s the difference between that and finding an off-the-rack suit that has the fabric, buttons and vents you want and then having it adjusted?
Well, there is the matter of actually finding a suit in the exect fabric, buttons and vents you want in your size. Also they can only adjust the suit so much. Especially if you don’t have a standard build.
Clearly you’re not a fat guy. There are not a lot of choices out there when you’re 6’2" 250lbs, with a muscular build from the waist down.
We’re talking books of fabric choices, not only colors and patterns but fabric weight. You choose not only how many buttons but what your button looks like, if you want real buttoning cuffs or just sewn on buttons. You can choose no pleats, regular pleats or inverted pleats on the pants. And the choices go on and on.
Maybe it’s because I’m someone who is very interested in fashion, clothing design, etc., but I most definitely can tell the difference between a $500 suit and a $1500 suit.