Creative Destruction

I posted earlier about my trouble getting clothes that fit. Here is my update.

I’ve been able to find some belts. I scored a nice 30″ belt from Kenneth Cole. However, it seems to no longer be available in 30″.

I also found another more casual belt from Levis, a “Roller Buckle Belt”, also 30″. It also appears to be no longer available.

So now I have the brown 30″ I got from Men’s Wearhouse and two nice black belts, one that works formally and another casual one. So that is a good situation.

Pants– I’ve picked up another pair of Bonobos, this time a midweight corduroy. I’m not as much a fan of the corduroy as I am of the other pair I bought earlier, made of cotton twill. I just like how the cotton twill fabric feels better, and it seems less prone to lint than the corduroy. I picked up the corduroy though because I thought given that its winter I should get some pants that are a bit warmer. But still, the corduroys are still nice.

So I finally got my suit from Michael Andrews. When I went to “take delivery” per my earlier post, I showed up and they still had to make a number of alterations. If it were up to me, I would not have been able to tell the difference with the dress shirt. It certainly seemed like it fit, but for what I was paying I definitely appreciated the fact that they inspected the clothes carefully for fit. The suit jacket clearly did not fit, but at the second fitting, it seemed fine, yet they discovered errors. On Saturday last week I went in for a final fitting, and they discovered yet another problem that I did not detect myself, and fixed it. I had it delivered to me on Monday, and I wore it happily to my interview this morning. Wearing the shirt that fit (technically it didn’t fit, but like I said, I couldn’t tell.) was a fairly life-changing experience. I realized then at that moment how none of my clothes fit until that point. It was quite the revelation. Unfortunately the fixed shirts had not come in yet, so I had to wear the suit with an older, ill-fitting shirt. The suit itself fit spectacularly. It really is amazing what a difference it makes.

In the meantime, however, I had tried on the suit at the first fitting and realized how much I am really seriously SWIMMING in the pair of cheap rack suits I bought at Jos A Bank. So a couple weeks ago I took one of them in to a local tailer to have it adjusted, basically taking the waist in for the jacket so that I no longer feel like I am swimming when I am wearing it. I picked that up from the tailor last week, and while it wasn’t nearly as good as a custom job, it suited me quite well. That seems like a good inexpensive option for a standard workaday suit, vs a more expensive special occasion suit. I went to Object Custom Tailors in Brooklyn. I plan to bring them my other rack suit and also have them fix my overcoat and my raincoat, so I no longer feel like I am swimming when I wear those as well.

For casual/going-out-type clothes I am still fairly stuck. I think if the weather stays this nice, for ‘going out’ purposes I could probably wear a colorful custom dress shirt with a jacket & well-fitting pants and I will be in good shape. That may be a little more formal than is typical, but if I go for some serious colors then it won’t look boring like your typical loser guy with his rolled-up-sleeves button-down  and khakis. So I am not really sure. I did go out the last weekend wearing a colorful striped dress shirt (that actually fit fairly well, even though it was a rack shirt) and jacket, and I didn’t feel like a n00b, so it may work. Color is very anti-New York, but I did read an article in the WSJ about the resurgence of color. (yeah, I am a dork, I get my fashion advice from the WSJ.)

I don’t have a good strategy for when the weather gets to short-sleeve weather, however.