The Meaning of Clothes, Part 1.
Call a suit, a suit (all bets are off)
I could write a whole series on the meaning of clothes. Perhaps I will. LMK in comments if that’s appealing.
Let’s begin with the suit…
Not just any suit, but Volodymyr Zelensky’s contested ensemble, which has crypto betters all in a spin.
Now, I’m not a betting woman, so it was news to me that those keen on losing (or making? Hmm, eventually, the house always wins) some (bit)coin rush to online an gambling den called Polymarket.
Who knew?
People bet on all sorts of things: the gee-gees. The footy. The date of the last UK general election (fraudulently). The US stock market (also fraudulently). Cheese rolling. Wife Carrying.
Burberry execs are betting on the Oasis reunion tour - in spite of, or because, they lost 75 million quid last year? You be the judge.
Now, in the fashion adjacent plot-twist no one saw coming, gamblers have been waging on whether the Ukrainian President would rest his military fatigues in favour of a suit before July.
Spoiler alert: he did. For a NATO dinner on June 25.
Maybe.
Sparks Notes
According to Wired, Polymarket was founded in 2020, and rose to prominence during Trump’s first election, when punters betting on The Orange One winning scored big-time. This fostered the myth-among-the-bonkers that Polymarket was “a more efficient source of truth” than traditional polling. Okay then. I’m willing to bet this fiasco is hitting hard among the sorts of people who think Deep State cloud seeding caused the Texas floods.
A suit, or not a suit, that is the question
Back to Volodymyr. The etymology of the word suit is French, from suivre, which means “to follow.” As in: the pants - or the skirt - follow the jacket.
So is that really a suit? Or just a black version of the French worker’s jacket favoured by the late Bill Cunningham, followed by non-matching trousers?
Honestly, it’s hard to tell. Hence Polymarket losers kicking up a fuss. According to Forbes, by July 7, related bets amounted to USD $160 million. As I write, they await a final decision either way, along with various implications for the future of unregulated online crypto betting that I’m struggling to care about. Anyway.
Such was the furore that Oleksandr Merezhko, head of Ukraine's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, agreed to clarify things with Newsweek:
“In some rare cases he might wear a suit," he said, but one adjusted to nod to the military. “There is a ‘political message’ in Zelensky's choices, reminding the world he is a president representing a country actively at war. Psychologically, the fact the President doesn't wear a suit might irritate only those who don't like Ukraine. It's about them, not about what the President wears."
Zelensky’s regular choice of wearing military fatigues to international meetings in solidarity with Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russia is deeply symbolic. In March, the Ukrainian fashion academic Zoya Zvynyatskivska told the Kyiv Independent newspaper that, in Trump’s mind at least, "If Zelensky takes off his military-style outfit and puts on a suit, what does that mean? It means he agrees that the war is over."
This is clothes as explicit messaging at the highest level. Pie in the face for anyone who argues that what we wear doesn’t matter.
From a broader fashion perspective, the suit is also loaded with meaning. As are its associated accessories. See the hilarious memes exaggerating Trump’s swinging d*ck ties.
In his 2016 book, The Suit, Form Function & Style, Christopher Breward calls it “one of the enduring symbols of modern civilisation” and “a prized symbol of distinction and power”.
Sociologist Tim Edwards goes further, and calls the suit “the very essence of men’s fashion and, indeed, of masculinity.”
Regardless, the idea of the suit as the pinnacle of power dressing (whatever gender the wearer) is entrenched. To don one is to say, sartorially speaking, that you mean business; that you’ve read the dress code, that you are smart, classy, polished, and ready to rule. Although some, like Ben Barry (now dean of fashion at Parsons) have rightly questioned its “most common representation in popular culture: a symbol of hegemonic masculinity”.
Who wears the pants?
Consider the bottom half of the traditional suit: trousers.
During WWII, the idea of western women in trousers was normalised - fair play, given they were doing so much of what had previously been considered men’s jobs, from acting as fire wardens to working in arms factories. Just 50 years earlier, refusing the traditional skirt, say, to ride your bicycle, was seen as alarmingly bold. But by the 1920s Chanel was in slacks, and by the ‘30s, fashion-forward glamazons had taken them up. Actually, left them long and slinky. Some brave babes even stepped out in jumpsuits, but women’s suiting was still generally skirt-follows-jacket. And Christian Dior’s hyper-femininity was on the horizon. He wanted women to “look like flowers”.
Though it beggars belief, for nearly 200 years French women officially had to get permission from the police in order to ‘dress like a man’. And while in later years (the technicality wasn’t finally obliterated until 2013), this was mostly forgotten as a blot on the legal copybook, as recently as the 1980s, women were denied entry into certain swish restaurants of wearing slacks.
My favourite story about the socialite fashion plate Nan Kempner is the one where she was turned away from Le Côte Basque in New York for wearing her Le Smoking pantsuit. She ducked into the loos, whipped off the bottom half, and returned to sit at her table in just the jacket. Take that, monsieur!
Now look again at that iconic 1975 Helmut Newton shot of Saint Laurent’s famed design. Still looks subversive, somehow, even today. But that’s Newton for you.
Power Dressing
The ‘80s, of course, was the era of the power suit - big shoulders to match big hair and even bigger greed. For the ladies, add miniskirts and stilettos. Or socks and sneakers for the subway.
It’s back!
Stella McCartney chose to show ‘Winter ‘25 ‘in a faux Stella Corp setting, albeit one with pole dancers in sparkling leotards. The office politics of that were about celebrating exotic dancing instead of using exotic skins.
She called the collection, Laptop to Lapdance - invoking “a study in masculine and feminine archetypes” via “a journey from the office to going out” (see below).
McCartney cast this season’s Stella woman as “educated, an entrepreneur, the boss. She a mother, a sister, a lover. She fights the good fight, for women, for animals, for everyone.”
Here, power dressing - which the designer acknowledged owes a debt to her classical training with her father’s favourite London tailor Edward Sexton - is based on the idea that “sexuality and sensuality, kindness and vulnerability are forms of strength and beauty.”
Podcast coming soon
While I was in London last month, I went to visit Edward Sexton’s current creative director Dominic Sebag Montefiore in Savile Row. I asked him what a good suit can do, and he told me, “people need something to make them feel special for certain situations” whether that’s “the power suit for the CEO to go into the boardroom, or a range of suits for Harry Styles to launch his solo career”. He said, “What we’re trying to do is work out what the clients needs are, understand them, and deliver a suit that will help them transcend [that].”
Ultimately, the suit is a power play. What sort of power - and how one wishes to deploy it - is up to the wearer.
Until next time,
Clare x
I absolutely loved this piece, Clare. Thank you for all you do