Well ... Hello, ladies and gentlemen and everyone watching!
I'm your host TheReportOfTheWeek and welcome to this newest video!
Now I decided to kind of take a little bit of a break from doing the food reviews
because I've had a lot on my mind today and I thought to myself, "You know what? I'm being spontaneous."
I'm gonna sit down and I want to share a few thoughts to YOU.
Because it's just been one of those things that, I mean it's been circulating in my mind for for eons,
but I finally wanted to just kind of take this to, you know, take it to paper -
just make a video about it and I wanted to share my thoughts about it.
Now, I'm sure like you see in the title. This video is about fashion, more specifically.
it's about suits and I guess, you know,
maybe to some that is like, you know, mind is absolutely blown that that somehow this guy that reviews food is
talking about suits, you know, what's the connection exactly?
Whereas for other people they might say, "Well of course!"
And yes, I do wear the suits every single day. This is my go-to
attire and it has been probably for . . .
Gosh, how time flies, for over you over ten years now?
It's just it's it's insane how I kind of look back and I think I've actually been wearing this type of clothing so long
for such a period of time.
But more importantly I wanted to make a video talking about, well,
suits in their current form, right? What's going on with the fashion industry?
What's going on in the world of suits? And I wanted to share a few thoughts on that.
First things first, I get a lot of comments.
Yeah, positive and negative on what I wear. (that one about the pimpin suit is true though. ha)
I'll say it straight up - upfront. You know? I'll get it right out of the way. When it comes down to wearing a suit in
2019 and I'm talking like you want to look good right? You want to look fashionable?
You want to look up to date? You want to look like you're in touch, right?
(i feel ya bro)
The stuff that I wear is not the way to go about it.
(oh no)
A suit today, that is consider good by, you know, society's standards is
usually slim fit. It should be you know more on the
form-fitting
side of things. So the jacket, you know, should definitely be a lot...
it should not be as loose as this jacket is. It should preferably be a two-button suit
with the notch lapel. It should have a little subtle lapel role and
shouldn't, you know, be like too too harshly pressed or or creased.
The pants should be slim fit, flat front.
Definitely need to have that taper there and the necktie should also be slim in order to accompany the rest of the suit.
What I wear is nothing even close to that and I fully get it.
I understand it. You know the suits that I wear are much baggier,
usually double-breasted or three-button suits, wide lapels,
drapey, baggy clothing, wide legs, pleats,
wide neckties. I mean, you name it! You know? Pretty much everything that is not considered fashionable in
2019 that you can almost guarantee you'll find in an ensemble of mine.
And the reason why I wear it,
even with that full understanding, is because I don't necessarily wear a suit to try to look fashionable.
I simply wear a suit because that's just what I want to wear.
And it's a certain style of suit that was popular at one point in time that I just I personally prefer.
Even though I I do know that certain things
today look better than others, I just prefer wearing the more dated cuts and that's just a matter of personal preference.
I think when it comes down to clothing,
dressing yourself,
in the end, I think you should just wear what you want to wear. You know? Wear what you want to wear.
But, of course, a lot of people want to wear something that other people think looks good and I get that.
And society's expectations, their standards, even just taking a look at the suit,
it changes over time. You go back to the 1970's and you see those crazy
disco suits, you know, that the
1970's was polyester suits,
the tuxedos with the giant bow tie, and the ruffled shirt and all of that stuff that, you know?
There's a time when people thought that looked good. You go to the 1980's, the 1990's -
the suits that I wear right now. The Wall Street suits, the contrast collars,
The things that you saw in American Psycho, Wolf of Wall Street,
the original Wall Street - those types of suits, people thought those looked good. And then you go to the more form-fitting
slim fit.
They even have, you know, tight fit, extreme slim fit ...
Etc, that a lot of people think looks good today.
So the idea of what is fashionable, what looks good?
That's something that always changes with time. And it will change. Ten years from now,
who knows what the future holds?
It might end up being the same thing, it might not be.
But that's a little bit of an aside.
Fashion changes with time and that's just one of the things that it always does, always
will do, you know, that's just the way fashion is.
But here's one thing that always got me:
I was never a big fan of
slim fit suits and there was a time when I was a very vocal
opponent of it, believe it or not. Nowadays. I've kind of
opened up toward it and I've said, you know,
like... wear what you want to wear and that's all that there is to it.
But you go back to 2014, and even 2015, I remember I would even
outwardly say it in some of my
podcasts and lectures, I would say, "I hate the way that it looks. I think it looks terrible with cetera, etc. Etc." And
Now I say, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a fan of it. I might not like the way it looks but that's okay."
But I was thinking today,
It seems to me that,
slim fit is hanging around for a very long time and
I'm gonna give my two cents as to why I think that it is.
Quite simply, you need to look at the fashion industry as a business. That's what it is.
When you really break it down when you go down to it, right?
If you need to get a suit, you're not gonna get it for free. You have to pay for it. It is an industry.
It's a business and I mean, what do we all know about businesses? They need to make money. They need to make a profit.
They need to to be in the green,
preferably anyway. You'll have businesses that are just running up a huge deficit but
most of the time they want to make money. And,
Let's face it, this is the cold hard truth of the matter:
Especially when it comes down to men's suits and formal wear,
quite simply, suits are not being worn as
frequently as they once were.
Now, I think when I say that it immediately invokes this image of like the
1940's or the 50's and old pictures when you see a baseball game and everyone there is wearing a full suit and tie and
people are going to the beach in a suit. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about even ten years ago going back to
2009-2010.
Even that recently
more people were wearing suits than they are now.
A few good examples even, you look at Wall Street, right?
The financial capital of the world - some will say.
I think a lot of people when when you think about Wall Street bankers,
you know, the stock market, you
think about people still wearing full suits and ties and all of that stuff. And don't get me wrong, if you go down to Wall
Street and for some odd reason you decide to just wander around the streets like a zombie for an hour or two,
yeah, you're gonna see plenty of people wearing suits and ties;
however, you look at the news, lots of these large companies in that industry
have gotten rid of their formal dress code and this is recent.
They've gotten rid of that requirement to wear a suit and tie. And a matter of fact.
the way you look at it more and more, you'll see that a lot of people in that finance
industry aren't even wearing suits to work anymore.
They're wearing dress pants and a fleece vest.
You know, the the Patagonia vests, no tie.
Not suits. Not like what you would see in the Wolf of Wall Street.
But just a vest,
some pants, no tie.
I look at it this way, too. Let's say you don't live in a major city, right? You just live in any town USA.
How many times do you see a person wearing a full suit
that isn't on a special occasion?
I would be willing to bet not a lot anymore.
Yes, there's still going to be the need for suits - you have to go to court. You have a court date?
Yeah, you're probably gonna have to wear a suit.
Wedding? Funeral?
Probably have to wear a suit there too. Go to a really formal event, a formal venue, etcetera?
Yeah, you're gonna have to wear a suit for that too..
Job interview? Maybe, but a lot of these things could even change with the times. One day the the legal system,
they may update their dress code - might not have to wear a suit anymore. Job interviews already you're seeing that getting more and more casual.
The suit industry is going through a difficult period of time. With fewer people
buying suits, that means less profits. And
these companies they know that. They know that they're getting less sales, fewer sales, and they're trying to think to themselves, "Okay?
What exactly are we going to do? How are we going to get through this? How are we going to get by?
How are we going to stay afloat?" The answer is simple:
Continue to use less and less fabric when making a suit and
continue to put an exorbitantly high markup on the suit in order to compensate for the lack of sales.
I think that's exactly what they're doing.
Because you look at it from a business standpoint? Okay sales are down.
But lets just say 30-40 percent. That's a big huge issue.
What are you going to do to try to fix that?
Drive sales back up?
But what if people don't want to buy the product in the first place or theirs fewer people around that want to buy it?
What do you do then?
Sometimes you got to make adjustments to the product, if you still want to try to make a profit
with fewer potential customers. And that's exactly, in my opinion what the suit
industry is doing and has been doing for the last number of years.
Now that's not to say that slim-fit doesn't look good.
I might not be a fan personally the way that I think that it looks on on some people. But on
certain individuals a slim fit suit can be very flattering and it certainly can look good.
But I think overall the industry is trying to push the idea
that "the tighter a suit is. the better". And
It's just being done because, let's face it, they want to spend less money
making a suit,
especially if it's of higher quality fabric, the less they have to include in this suit the better.
So they put the absolute minimum into making a suit and they still charge thousands of dollars for it.
That's how they continue to make money.
That's how they continue to make profit. And in doing so, of course,
they try to run an advertising campaign to try to promote the fact that you know suits like this
they don't look good. You should stop wearing them. I mean, that's how fashion is. It's a business: "Don't wear the old things -
They don't look good anymore! They look boring. They look dated. Be new!" Right? "Be new. Be out there."
"And wear what we want you to wear"
That's the way that it goes.
So in order to compensate for the lack of sales:
Fewer material,
High markup - that's the way that this industry works.
That's how it's been functioning for, probably the last decade. And an interesting thing is going to happen soon
- because the way fashion is, like we mentioned earlier, it is ever changing -
the fashion industry is going to have to change at some point.
But how are they going to change? What is it going to transform into? That is going to be an interesting thing to watch!
Sometimes you're already starting to see a few very high fashion brands,
you know, trying to open up the suits of it, trying to go back to more 70's-esque
styles, 80's styles. Will those take off will they not right now?
We're in this kind of intermediary period where it's just going to be a very interesting thing to watch.
You could compare this to a lot of other markets, too.
You even look at chocolate bars, you know?
I was eating a Snickers bar the other day. You see the size of it?
The thing is miniscule compared to how it used to be. You even look at the diamond market, right? And diamonds, in and of themselves,
are really just useful for industrial purposes,
for drill bits, for construction, etc.
Until a company came along and decided. "Hey, we can give the idea that this is a precious stone and
incredibly valuable. Get that idea into everyone's heads and we'll make a ton of money and we'll be filthy rich!"
These ideas, these practices in business have been around for such a long time. And
Now in the suit industry, because of declining popularity in sales, you're seeing it employed there as well. So
it's one of those things keep your eyes open and
who knows what's gonna be done next? But in my opinion, that's why suits are the way that they are today.
That's why they have been this way for so long because they have to find a way to make a profit.
In the end though, moral of the story:
Those are my thoughts. Those are my ideas,
digging deep into the what's and why's and how's and all that stuff.
But in the end, if you want to wear a slim fit suit,
Go for it! If you want to wear a 1980's suit, go for it!
And if you want to wear one of those 70's disco suits?
Go for it too! Rock it. Wear it with pride.
Wear what you want to wear as long as it's not hurting others. That's my ideology.
You know? You do you, You be you! That's the reason why I wear what I wear today.
Not to try to be like one of those Instagram
guys, you know that's always posting the
pictures and everything, you know, with the suits every every single day 24/7. No. I just wear it because that's what I want to wear.
It's what makes me happy. You should wear what makes you happy too! Thank you for watching this video and do take care!
I'm your host The Report Of The Week.