A suit gives you instant credibility, making you look pulled together with very little effort. Photo: Instagram/Tom Ford
Think suits are back? You’re not imagining it – they really are.
To be fair, suits never really went away. They just became less de rigueur, even in white-collar professional environments, as casual Friday became casual everyday (the exception being Washington, DC, the last bastion of the classic suit).
And yet there is a reason the suit has survived as long as it has.
As Anne Hollander posited in her classic book Sex And Suits (if you haven’t read it, you should), the suit is essentially the human body, idealised to resemble Greek sculpture by clothing. Who doesn’t want that?
According to Linda Fargo, the senior vice president, fashion office and store presentation at Bergdorf Goodman, a suit works on two levels.
On the one hand, it can make you “feel pulled together in an increasingly up-for-grabs and disquieting time”, and it is practically “an act of stability”. On the other, and for the next generation, “suit dressing is actually a new mode”.
Read more: When did the retro sneaker fashion trend return, and is it here to stay?
Suits were all over the recent runways. Photo: Instagram/GivenchyThere’s something easy about donning a suit.
It gives you instant credibility, making you look pulled together with very little effort.
Suits also tap into our current nostalgia for all things 1990s. That’s because, along with grunge, the other big theme of that decade was a sort of professional minimalism as practiced by Helmut Lang, Jil Sander and Martin Margiela, who took the stuffing out of the suit.
Maybe that’s why suits were all over the recent runways, present in Haider Ackermann’s louche Tom Ford show, Sarah Burton’s parade of female power at Givenchy and Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel debut, which opened with a simple tweed pantsuit (recently seen on Michelle Obama).
Though suits have been creeping back into fashion for a while now – Saint Laurent’s power shoulders emerged in early 2023, they have officially reached critical mass, according to Tagwalk, the runway show search engine.
Simply consider that there were eight pages of suits on Tagwalk after the Spring/Summer 2025 shows, 14 pages for Autumn/Winter 2025, and 19 pages for Spring/Summer 2026.
Little wonder Fargo called a suit jacket “a priority wardrobe pillar, especially now”.
Bailey Moon, a stylist who worked with president Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, during their time in the White House, as well as Pamela Anderson, said: “When I’m unclear about the dress code – whether for a business event or something social, I always reach for a blazer or something tailored to anchor the outfit.
"Suiting can be dressed up or dressed down, which is why it’s such a reliable foundation for almost any look.”
Similarly, Gabriela Hearst, who always includes tailoring in her collections, said it’s the thing she wears when she doesn't know what to wear.
You can wear a suit on the red carpet and to a premiere, to the office and out to dinner.
Also, you can disaggregate it and wear the jacket as a blazer and the trousers as pants, making it an economical choice (this is especially true when traveling).
But today’s suit is not yesterday’s suit, meaning the way you should wear it is different.
Read more: Fashion finds its true self? Why authenticity now matters more than trends
Fargo recommends combining a suit, or jacket and trousers, with things “that have a casual vibe, like denim, loosely worn hair, a knit or tee underpinnings and non-dressy accessories”.
Blazy did that with his Chanel suits by dropping the waistband to create a trompe l’oeil appearance of exposed undergarments, a reference to the streetwear trend of jeans falling off the hips. The rolled-up sleeves and sheer T-shirt underneath also help.
For men, Moon suggested wearing “a tank top under a suit to show some skin, a turtleneck or even a T-shirt”.
Or swap a pocket square for a brooch or favourite pin.
The point is, Fargo said: “You can take a jacket pretty much anywhere, anytime, and it can be styled to fit the moment. You won’t miss. You can’t say that about many other things.” – ©2025 The New York Times Company/Vanessa Friedman
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
