4 Core Suits to have in your Closet

May 16, 2017

Over the past few years, many offices have changed their dress code to a more casual approach. Whether that be slacks and a button-down or the Mark Zuckerberg approach with a t-shirt and jeans look, companies will allow their employees who are non client-facing to be more comfortable when sitting at a desk all day. Despite these new trends, there are still companies who require either a suit and tie or at least a sport coat to hang on the back of their office door in the event they have to meet with a client unexpectedly.

The conservative approach to having 4 core suits in your closet when wearing them on a daily basis is a solid navy suit, solid charcoal suit, navy pinstripe suit, and charcoal pinstripe suit. The person who taught me this is also the same clothier who put me in a 42R instead of a 38Slim from my previous blog post. The reasoning for wearing dark navy and charcoal is because they are more subtle and the people you’re around most won’t notice if you wear them on a weekly basis. The problem with this approach is functionality. You’re not able to utilize the suit separates as much with these 4 options.

Side note: If you have trouble telling if your navy suit is black even in natural light, you should never have purchased that color to begin with.

The 4 core suits every man should have in his closet:

1. Solid Blue Suit
2. Solid Grey or Charcoal Suit
3. Blue Pattern Suit
4. Grey or Charcoal Pattern Suit (preferably opposite color of solid grey or charcoal suit)

***Notice how I said the color blue instead of navy, pictured above

***Grey can either be light or dark, just make sure the shade is considerably lighter than the charcoal

My reasoning? Your closet will be fore functional. With these 4 custom suits, you have at least 14 different suit/suit separate combinations you can wear by pairing the 4 together. And this isn’t including throwing in shirt/tie combinations or other color slacks such as khaki or brown.

I help design my client’s custom suit jackets to also be worn as sport coats. To achieve this, you sub the boring, solid, matching color buttons with more versatile buttons as well as shorten the length of the jacket (which is also the style for suit jackets now anyways). You don’t want it to look like you’re wearing a suit jacket as a sport coat and TRUST me, it’s very obvious. Sport coats have traditionally been shorter in length with buttons that can go with any color shoes.

By doing this, not only do you have 4 custom suits, you have 4 custom sport coats as well to pair with other color slacks or a pair of dark jeans for either Friday casual or a date night.

I’ve generated a list of a few weekly outfit combinations you can utilize when customizing your tailored suits:

Weekly Outfit Combination Examples:

1.) Solid Blue Jacket/Solid Blue Pants
2.) Solid Grey Jacket/Solid Grey Pants
3.) Blue Pattern Jacket/Blue Pattern Pants
4.) Charcoal Pattern Jacket/Charcoal Pattern Pants
5.) Solid Blue Jacket/Charcoal Pattern Pants

1.) Solid Grey Jacket/Solid Blue Pants
2.) Charcoal Pattern Jacket/Solid Grey Pants
3.) Solid Blue Jacket/Solid Grey Pants
4.) Blue Pattern Jacket/Solid Blue Pants
5.) Solid Grey Jacket/Charcoal Pattern Pants

1.) Charcoal Pattern Jacket/Solid Blue Pants
2.) Blue Pattern Jacket/Solid Grey Pants
3.) Solid Grey Jacket/Blue Pattern Pants
4.) Solid Blue Jacket/Blue Pattern Pants
5.)  Charcoal Pattern Jacket/Charcoal Pattern Pants

***Never pair different pattern jackets with different pattern pants

With these combinations, it won’t appear that your wearing the same thing to work each week. And again, if you throw in shirts/ties/pocket squares, you’ll have even more wardrobe combinations.