00:00Dress codes, though, are more relaxed than ever across industries, not just on Wall Street.
00:03Chris Rauser, Bloomberg's editor for Global Luxury Coverage, sees a new trend emerging.
00:08He writes, the pandemic seemed as if it finally marked the death knell of the suit,
00:12and yet something improbable has started happening in recent years.
00:16The suit is making a comeback.
00:18Chris joins us now to discuss, and he is in his suit as well as his bow tie.
00:23Yes.
00:23Great to have you here, Chris.
00:25What are you laughing at?
00:26I did.
00:27I asked Scarlett for permission to wear the bow tie on.
00:29You didn't ask me.
00:30That's wonderful.
00:31That's why it's funny.
00:32Is it tie-tie or is it fake-o-tie?
00:33Tie-tie.
00:34I went to boarding school.
00:35Come on.
00:37You know, you think about the companies that benefit from the return of suits.
00:41Tailored Brands, which owns Men's Warehouse and Joseph A. Bank, they filed for an IPO.
00:44Like, this is a real thing.
00:45They went bankrupt in 2020, and Brooks Brothers also went bankrupt.
00:49And they, you know, that was, the pandemic should have been an extinction-level event for suiting,
00:55for tailors, especially mass suiting, because we don't, people came back to the office and don't,
00:58you know, and didn't dress up anymore.
01:00Even, I used to wear a lot of suits to this office, and then I sort of stopped after,
01:03you know, a few years after the pandemic.
01:05And then when people started going to weddings again, and people started having events,
01:10they started buying suits again.
01:12People lost a lot of weight because of GLP-1.
01:16And had different shapes and sizes.
01:18And then a funny thing happened in the past few years where, after that boom of, like,
01:23people coming back and having to buy suits because weddings were happening again,
01:26people stopped having to wear suits, have to wear suits to work and stuff,
01:30and they started wearing suits for fun.
01:32So now the thing that's, like, really hopping at Brooks Brothers, for example, is fashion suiting.
01:36It's fun suits with fun colors and textures, and same thing at Men's Warehouse,
01:40and all these other smaller independent brands.
01:43And you went to visit a Japanese suit maker who comes to New York twice a year to take orders.
01:47And the getting-to-know-you process between tailor and customer was really fascinating
01:51because it wasn't, like, where do you work, what kind of office is it?
01:54Oh, yeah.
01:54It was about, like, what's your interest?
01:56This is amazing.
01:57Yeah, right when I started reporting this story, I went to the Armory,
01:59which is a wonderful menswear shop on the Upper East Side.
02:02And this tailor, Taylor Cade, Yamamoto-san, comes from Tokyo twice a year, doesn't speak English,
02:08and he comes and he has these total fans that come and they do orders with him,
02:13and working through interpreters, he talks to them about what they like, how they live,
02:17do you like 70s rock and roll, do you like sailing?
02:20And so all these people, I talked to, like, a guy who owns a saxophone shop in Boston,
02:25I talked to a guy who is an engineer at Google who wears three-piece suits to work at Google
02:29where everyone's wearing T-shirts.
02:30Like, there are people who, once they, yeah, once they figured out that suits can express you
02:36and something about you, it doesn't have to be this uniform.
02:38I'm asked all the time on this.
02:39So this is Ralph Fitzgerald, which is the same act.
02:42Like, a lot of people are into it.
02:43I won't bore people with the huge success he's having right now.
02:47But the answer is he says this is all about America.
02:49He's from England.
02:50He cut cloth for Huntsman years ago, and he moved to New York
02:54just because this is where the return of the suit is.
02:58Yeah, you're seeing a lot of new tailor shops here.
03:00You're seeing a lot of tailors from London move their cutters here.
03:05Dunhill's opening up a shop for the first time here coming up later this year.
03:09So I think it really is American.
03:12We've got to bring it up.
03:13With Chris, folks, now we can only do this because I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.
03:17Oh, my gosh.
03:18Should I be wearing white sneakers with my beautiful Fitzgerald suit?
03:22I mean, this is like the new thing.
03:24I see it on TV, like in Washington.
03:26It's not working for me, Chris.
03:28Is it working for you?
03:29I do it sometimes, I've got to say, because I have bad feet.
03:31So I do sometimes wear a sneaker.
03:33For comfort.
03:34Come on, Roger Federer can get away with it.
03:36He's the only guy in the world that can get away with it.
03:39It's a very Silicon Valley thing, too, right, to wear a white sneaker.
03:42They don't dress well.
03:43I'm sorry.
03:43Yeah, well, fair enough.
03:44I think a lot of people are doing it.
03:46I don't know that you need to do it.
03:47I think you probably look better with a dress, too.
03:49Or his Doc Martens.
03:50That's what you wear with your suits.
03:52I have a bunch of things.
03:53But yeah, I think Doc Martens, they're doing some different things.
03:55The ones I wear are built in their English factory, like the original factory, and all
04:00that.
04:00What's the suit cost?
04:02It really varies.
04:03The, you know, Bloomingdale's where they saw the suits go down and then, like, come up
04:07again.
04:08It was like a wild ride, the men's guy said there.
04:10You can get a suit for, like, $500, $600 from Hugo Boss and some of their entry-level
04:14stuff, and they have all the way up to, like, $7,000 at Xenia.
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