These late night hosts have something in common.
This is fantastic.
It's exactly what I've been looking for.
During the pandemic, they traded in their suit and ties for casual attire.
They aren't alone. The days of wearing a suit and tie to the office were numbered well before the pandemic
ushered in the era of slob chic.
This is Make It Explores.
The Brooks Brothers three-piece suit is and will forever be a staple of men's fashion.
Barack Obama wore a Brooks Brothers suit for his presidential inauguration.
So did Abraham Lincoln and 38 other commanders-in-chief.
But the cultural shift from formalwear to athleisure was too much for Brooks Brothers.
In July 2020, after more than 200 years in business, the dress shirt and suit maker filed for bankruptcy.
Brooks Brothers isn't the only men's retailer in financial trouble.
Tailored Brands, which owns JoS.
A.Bank and Men's Wearhouse, closed 500 stores last year and laid off 20% of its workforce.
Ralph Lauren laid off 3,700 workers as sales for its preppy clothing shrunk by almost 40% in the second
fiscal quarter of 2021.
J.Crew filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2020 after struggling for years with high debt and
declining sales. In fact, 2020 saw the lowest apparel sales figures in decades.
A big part of that is no doubt due to Covid-19.
But the trend away from the suit started long before the pandemic.
I think we've seen in many ways the pandemic has just accelerated trends that were already really shaping up
in the fashion industry.
And when you dove in and look at menswear in particular, it was definitely a trend and has been a
trend toward casualization.
In 1992, Levi Strauss mailed 25,000 pamphlets to H.R.
managers across the country called A Guide to Casual Businesswear to boost sales of its line of Docker's
khakis. The whole business-casual trend was something that was seismic for the fashion industry and it's
something that we still haven't recovered from.
Around the same time, Silicon Valley CEOs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were abandoning the traditional
suit for jeans, khakis and turtlenecks.
These executives didn't have to adhere to any rules.
And, you know, a hoodie became the new suit for them.
Then came Mark Zuckerberg and his famous black hoodie.
He steps out and he's wearing that.
Well, then all the men that want to be like him in turn are going to wear the same thing.
It's crazy how one guy, you know, can really set the tone in the fashion industry.
It didn't take long for other industries to notice how popular Zuckerberg's casual attire was with
millennials. JPMorgan relaxed its dress code in 2016, although you still couldn't wear sweats, leggings,
yoga pants or flip flops to the office.
Three years later, Goldman Sachs relaxed its dress code, which makes sense since more than 75% of its
workforce were born after 1981.
They wanted to appeal to a younger generation.
They want to wear more comfortable clothes and they don't really maybe enjoy dressing up as much as their
parents or grandparents did.
If the whole point of the suit is a show of status, then what does it mean if you're forced to wear one to
the office? Instead of representing power, it just becomes a uniform.
But when putting on a suit is a choice, it takes on an entirely different meaning.
Like famous director and suit-lover Guy Ritchie laid out in a May 2017 episode of the Joe Rogan
Experience... The officers had come along, the number crunchers would come along and there was no
creativity in the suit.
A suit needs to be creative.
The person that puts it on can't be putting it on because he's told to put it on.
He's got to want to put it on.
I don't think the suit will ever die.
I do not think this is a permanent death of the suit.
I think we will see an evolution.
You know, maybe there are parts of it that become a bit more casual.
And certainly you've seen a ton of guys mix and match sneakers with a suit, which 10, 20 years ago, you
know, that was not a thing.
And that's certainly really popular today.
The confluence of relaxed dress codes and changing norms due to the pandemic means the suit will probably
never be what it once was.
Maybe that's a good thing. I don't think this is the death of the suit.
Just the suit is getting a little upgrade.