Are expensive clothes largely bullshit?

SORRY, THIS SITE'S SHITTY SPAM FILTER KEEPS GETTING TRIGGERED FOR SOME REASON SO I HAVE TO SPLIT UP MY POST INTO SEVERAL

Maybe I do look like a slob and don't know it, but I like to think I have reasonably sophisticated tastes. I do admit that I love my Armani Collezioni pants (550 marked down to 70 at Neim Marc Last Call on Black Friday morning) but I think I like them more for their perfect fit.

God this website is unbelievably shitty. I can't even write more than two sentences because it "triggers the spam filter" but doesn't tell me why or how to fix it. I'll just go elsewhere. Thanks anyway.

Ahaha..I wonder if the filter thinks you're one of those shoe/watch spammers we had a while back.

Staying on topic, I think that there are definitely diminishing returns in quality, for all goods. Really top of the line stuff just isn't worth it for junior monkeys like me. No way I'm forking out more than $50 for a shirt.

I'm pretty sure that Warren Buffet drives some POS station wagon and lives in a 3BR house in Nebraska.

Alot depends on personal asthetics as well. But there are alot of brands whose quality is the same as the high end brands. I like nicer clothes, but a $400 Charvet shirt is probably as good as an onsale $150 Turnbull and Asser shirt. Some things are just ridiculously over priced if you ask me. I think though, even if you don't like to spend alot on clothes, everyone should have one put together outfit that might be more expensive. Have a really good suit, shirt, tie, shoes, sweater, jacket etc.

I'll try again to paste another sentence from my original post ;)

My suits are all main line Hickey Freeman (marked down to $550 each and then tailored) and they do look great, but I just feel like I could buy a new suit at Mens Warehouse for $400 or a new HF for $1,500 and have them both tailored an no one on the street would be able to say one looks better than the other.

Thoughts?

If you have the money and already have a good suit, just get whatever is cheaper. Bluefly actually has alot of really nice stuff marked down alot.

OP, I'm totally on-board with everything you said. I've never quite understood. A more talented worker with decent clothes is going to get the promotion over a less talented worker with better clothes (all else equal, which it never is.)

Since that sentence added nothing - I will share that the only piece of my wardrobe I ever get comments on, whether positive or negative, is a button down my teenage sister bought for me with her allowance money at CostCo. Yeah, it's Kirkland brand. Unreal.

The diminishing returns of fashion are apparent, but a $250 Men's Warehouse suit (because you should never, ever pay anything close to the $400 retail if you HAVE to buy there) will be vastly inferior to a $500 Hickey. The stitching, the quality of the wool, and the time it'll last are all crappier on the MW suit.

Obviously you guys have never bought a real tailored suit before. Once you go bespoke (or MTM) you won't go back. The difference between stuff $1,000 is stark; it may appear the same for someone who doesn't care but the quality of the fabric and cutting is discernible for gentlemen who appreciate the finer things in life.

Don't fall for the brand of the suit. Armani, Boss, Brooks Brothers...etc. are all just brands. They aren't made for you in mind (made for the masses) and that's what matter in a suit.

Let's not get started on the shoes....people often sell themselves short by having a nice suit but cheap shoes.

I buy my suits at Brookes Brothers during their huge sale, $1,000 suit for 500 bucks. Suits, dress shirts, and shoes are the few things I buy designer/high end. Everyday clothes the fanciest I get is Banana Republic.

OP- WSO has a pretty awesome spam filter. The reason you're triggering it is probably because you're talking about prices and clothes. Once you reach something like 25 or 50 banana points the filter gets disabled for ya.

Trust me, it's a lot better this way, WSO was getting spam like you couldn't believe until they put the filter into place.

I can see why they'd do it then if they had bad SPAM problems -- I tried to cut the dollar signs out of my post and remove letters from the brand names but still couldn't get it to go through.

Anyhoo, for BigHedgeHog, I'm not so sure. You said the difference between $1,000 stuff is stark, but I'm not so sure. My Hickey Freeman suits are tailored to fit me well but the cost $1,500 retail. They are nice, but my point is there are other suits in the few hundred dollar range that seems just as nice, and it seems people on the street can't tell a difference.

I've heard longevity, but all my stuff has lasted the same amount of time whether it was ultra cheap or ultra expensive, and the nice thing about cheaper things (as long as they seem the same to me) is that I can wear them downtown without panicking over a spill or a tear. I can just replace it.

The quality of material and the cutting are the deal breakers. For MTM and bespoke suits, the fabric is so much softer with higher thread counts that even if you wear it all day it doesn't feel stuffy. Seemingly minute details also make a suit look and feel much better. Things like the linings inside the pants and the suit, buttons, stitching, and most importantly the cut are much better on B/MTM suits. Tailored to me is when someone takes a retail off the rack suit to his nearest tailor and fix a few things. Aside from the length of the jacket and pants, there aren't really a lot of adjustments the tailor can make. Plus the canvas of the suit will probably not be as good and that the buttons on the sleeve would look weird if you had to shorten the sleeve (makes the buttons too close to the hand and not spaced properly).

For shoes you can definitely tell. Allen Edmonds is the minimum standard (IMHO) but I don't like it much because the styling seems too old fashioned. I'm not talking about fashion shoes, but have you seen how fashionable shoes like Alden and Edward Green are?

I don't claim to be an expert at dressing well nor am I the fashion police, but I don't agree with the statement that junior guys should dress cheaply (or worse, sloppily) just because they are junior. The image that you project at work carriers further than you think. With a well fitted suit, you will project more confidence knowing that know how to dress well. Your boss and clients (if and when you see one) will notice and treat you differently. Try it.

I get the most compliments on my slim fit shirts from GAP and my dress pants from Express. They fit me perfectly and look really good and are comfortable, in addition to being cheap. I just wear a ferragamo or hermes belt and people probably think the entire outfit is of similar expensive brands. Thats my little trick, spend less on clothing, more on accessories and get the same look and compliments. It's worked so far in Long Island, idk if experienced bankers could tell the difference on wall street tho.

To each his own, I guess.

Cool, thanks for the input so far...this has been a good discussion.

@Stallion, can people tell it is a ferragamo or hermes belt? To me (again not knowing anything about this) it would seem that a leather belt would look like a leather belt for the most part. Is it the buckle, or does the leather look different?

Thanks, WBJ

I think when it comes to clothes, the emperor has no clothes. It seems to me I can go to Macys or JC Penny and get 120 Wool slacks that are high quality but without the brand name. But when it comes to dress pants and shirts, you can't see the name on the tag anyway. As long as it doesn't look like cheap material and it is tailored to fit, it sounds like it is akin to buying the generic brand of shampoo that is made from the same ingredients but without the marketing cost. It seems like a smarter thing to do whether you're rich or not.

I might lose status on this next admission, but I have two pairs of dress shoes (one black, one brown). They are full leather uppers, and are great looking cap-toe Oxfords. They are Cherokee Brand from Wal-mart! Made in China. I polish them about quarterly or bi-monthly and am always amazed at how rich and supple the leather looks after I hand polish them myself. People talk about more expensive shoes lasting twice as long and that's where the price is worth it, but I've had both these pairs for 7 years now and they still look new after polishing. Besides,the total price I paid per pair was $27.99 and at that price I could just throw them out and buy a brand new pair every year and still never catch up to the cost of the "A brands." I keep wanting a pair of AE Park Avenues, but even at the current sale ($199) I look at them and they just seem not much different from the leather oxfords I already wear. The big difference to me seems to be that the bottoms are rubber rather than leather, but it is a very thin rubber so from any angle it looks like a normal leather bottom unless you're actually seeing the bottom of my feet...but then I have better traction and don't need to resole my shoes. They certainly don't look like Rockports or something (hilarious...I heard someone call Rockports the "mullets of the business shoe world...business on top and a party for hiking on the bottom"). I'm sure I'll be excommunicated from the fashion forum now, but I feel better getting that admission off my chest ;)

Unless you're relatively discerning, it's probably tough to tell how nice a shirt is when someone is wearing it under a jacket. Similar with suits - if it fits the person well, they can disguise the fact that it's really cheap and most people won't notice, although it will be quite obvious to others.

The things that stand out most to me are ties and shoes. If you are unaware and just buy cheap shoes, it is pretty easy to tell and you will look like a jackass. If you are aware of your own style and clothes and specifically choose to wear cheap shoes that are in good taste, you can probably get away with it. I just find that people who care enough to have very nice looking cheap shoes tend to also be the people who care enough about their appearance that they'll buy nicer shoes. Hell, I still wear a pair of Cole Haan loafers I've had since before college, but I'd never wear them to something that required me to look formal or nice in any way.

And with ties - you definitely don't need to buy super expensive 200+ dollar ties, but at least spring for classic Brooks Brothers ties on sale or something. For those of you who think you can't afford nicer ties - you're just not looking hard enough. I found a big sale they were having in Manhattan last week and saw that pretty high-end, name brand ties were selling for $30 a piece (normal retail was around $160), which is well within the range of anyone on this site.

Fine clothes ARE like fine wine - that is, to those who care, a lot of $$ can be spent and you will feel the difference, and for those who don't care, it's important to have in mind a few good names to maximise the satisfaction to $ spent ratio. Some of you will be following en primeur auctions, others will be content drinking the occasional bottle of Haut Marbuzet (probably the best value per $ in Bordeaux). It's just important that you know to spend $60 on a 2nd wine from a great castle rather than waste it on some designer crap from Australia or California that will taste of nothing (PS: animals on the label are a marketing tactic targeted specifically at women who don't know how wine tastes like and who make most of the purchasing decisions, apparently - buy accordingly).

It is true that nowadays, except perhaps at top law firms, nobody cares what you wear so long as you look clean and the clothes fit ok. In fact I know a couple of exceptions even to this - a fantastic guy used to wear these horrible colour combinations (brown or grey shirt, massive dark green potato knotted tie, etc.), his suits didn't fit him well, but he absolutely nailed everything at work and the clients loved him. In business what matters is your $$ contribution, at the end of the day.

So it comes down to how comfortable you feel with yourself, and having the self pride of wanting to look "as good as you can". With some careful hunting as described above (US sales are AMAZING) and selecting the right brands, you can set yourself up a decent wardrobe and forget about it until the next sales. Spend 2-3 hours looking around style forums, research what makes a RTW shirt decent, and learn which brands are worth it. Then it's over and done with so you can move on.

I'll just add that shoes are something you need to spend on. Yes, a Harvie & Hudson shirt for $40 (as part of their 3 for 100 quid offer) will outdress most designer crap (and to Otter above, you WILL see the difference on a shirt worn under a jacket, if only just from the way the collar reflects light and its shape). But with shoes, the $ spent goes straight in build quality, so you need to blow at least $400 to get Goodyear welted soles which will take up the shape of your foot over time, breathe correctly, and usually be on a shoe whose leather allows it to be shined correctly. Rubber soles have no place in a man's business wardrobe, although few places will care these days.

What is the value in a $3,000 bespoke (proper bespoke, not MTM, not what you call "tailored") suit from Savile Row and a $3,000 pair of bespoke shoes from John Lobb or Vass compared to a $1,500 Zegna "adjusted" RTW suit and a $500 pair of Church or C&J Oxfords? It's not about the quality of the fabric, or the components, or the build quality, although these are marginally better than those very fine RTW examples (you can even spend $3,000 on a Brioni RTW suit and $2,000 on Kiton RTW shoes if you desire). The bespoke process is special for two reasons, the first is that you are working with an artisan with immense experience (mid-40s is considered young on the Row), who can advise you on the style that fits you personally best, so you can develop as a stylish man, and the second is that this craftsman will design a suit from a pattern that is entirely made from scratch, and fitted to you personally, down to your most minor details (your posture, the way your left shoulder slumps a bit more than the right, the shape of your leg, etc.). The result is a suit that, to most women (except i-bankers I hasten to add - those I have found better informed than men!) looks like "a suit" just like to us Louboutins are "just shoes", but that will be incredibly comfortable to wear, that will last 20 years or more (it is not uncommon for suits to be adjusted for the son of the client) and that make you look as good as you could possibly look because they are designed to enhance your appearance. This to me is well worth the $$ and the amount of time you will spend on this (3 fittings, to be arranged with a British guy who flies in 4 times a year, at least 8 weeks from measure to delivery). As they say, you only need 5 bespoke suits and you're sorted for the year. However be careful when choosing your tailor, as this will be a man who will accompany you sartorially for the rest of your life. Choose a man whose taste you trust, with whom you can work in the very long term, and be ready for the first few suits to be prototypes of the style you will develop over several decades.

One last point on super fabrics: a nice fashion that is driving up the price of super fine materials. But I would not recommend going down that lane for a work suit, as the material will be used extremely rapidly - a (real) super 200+ fabric will be worn after just a few days or weeks. You should favour simple, high quality worsteds from reputable cloth merchants (Dormeuil, etc.) which will last, be more comfortable to wear, and look just as good or better. The number is just a number - quality comes from the length and strength of the fibers, which are more important.

Cheap stuff looks cheap Ubicuous brands are mostly BS and OP High-end stuff too

Most people don't give a shit if you traveled to Napoli or London to get your suit or just bought it on sale at WMT. However it's always good to have a couple of good attire combinations and one pair of nice shoes/belt.

Just get 90% of your wardrobe in a good mid-priced range store (think RL Polo or online vendors like CThyrwitt, ThomasPink). Get everything during sales. Get some nice cheap suits (100% wool, no frkn polyester). And the 10% left in a good brand. Just don't get too crazy since you won't be wearing it too much and your body shape is going to change. Shoe sizing is the only thing that won't change.

My advice is to stay away from Armani, Vuitton and the likes (this also includes Zegna which is less tacky but equally overpriced).

I have a mix of high and low stuff.

Shoes and accessories... PRICE MATTERS. Just line up Ferragamos next to cheaper dress shoes and there is a clear and obvious difference. Same with high quality leather goods (belts, watch straps, wallets) over time.

I don't think suiting matters so much on price, it's about cut and tailoring.

Shirts... as a woman I have a gazillion Brooks shirts and they've always done me just fine...

Agree with kraken, the bulk of your wardrobe can and should be mid-range, nice stuff that compliments you and fits well. A few key pieces that are really nice and will last you 10 years or more go the distance.

And for God sakes, do NOT skimp on the shoes. Like I said, quality here shows and matters.

They are not largely bullshit - from fabric to stitching and detail work, the quality of certain brands is superior. Shoes probably show the biggest difference from price point to price point.

But at your stage in life you don't need anything too expensive, as the only people you would be able to impress are other people with really high quality clothes, and it doesn't sound like you are in that position/circle yet. None of your friends will recognize a difference between 3, 4, 6, and 7 fold tie, even though the difference exists, so why inconvenience yourself?

Some people in London go to Naples to buy suits (those who graduated from Bocconi AND have the taste to go for soft shoulders); when I bought CT and TP I never went to their stores, always bought online despite living 3 tube stops away; I know plenty of analysts using one pair of shoes + belt (although both look like crap and I'd recommend rotating at least 3 pairs of Goodyear-welted oxfords); Armani is consistently crap, Vuitton is a girl's brand, Zegna has fantastic fabrics (which is what they are known for in the business) and their suits are fully canvassed so you can find decent stuff although you are not far from e.g. Steed MTM at that price point.

Argonaut - because you have pride and because you might like nice stuff. I enjoy wearing a beautiful watch, I enjoy having shoes shined to a polish (only on the hard parts of course) with antiquing worked in over the months, I enjoy having a tie knot that looks like a tie knot, I enjoy having a suit that breathes and fits my body well, I enjoy even starching my collar for formal occasions (still considering detachable collars but it's harder to get away with them these days) and adding a subtle pocket square. It is true that so long as what you wear resembles "a suit" people will be fine with you - this is banking, not legal, and for the first two years you're in a huge office being tanned by neons and the flicker of your PC. But it's nice to be working in an industry where one can still dress well and not be thought of as an idiot.

Loved your explanation in your previous post EURCHF.

My first tailored suit fits me beautifully and is so much better than the ones I bought off the rack.

As for shoes, I bought a pair of Allen Edmonds that are amazing, in contrast a pair of shoes I bought from Johnston & Murphy fell apart in 3 months. The difference in quality shows over time.

Oh, mostly cos I enjoy these discussions and Europeans don't care much for them :P

Technically speaking Naples IS an epicenter for bespoke clothing, as the tasteful man will have a soft shoulder built into his suits, and that IS called a Neapolitan shoulder (the more common Roman/hard shoulder being used almost everywhere else bar the Row). Since Naples came up with the style of the best...

Ooooh I love a bit of snobbery! Right, back to work in jeans and mocassins...

Definitely not. Armani is a quintessentially manly brand. It became popular by advocating looseness in formal clothing.The guy is lucky that his brand became synonymous with "expensive nice suit" in popular speak; now he can sell quartz watches for hundreds of USD.

I don't know. all the armani suits I see don't really strike me as work appropriate. They seem to me as more of a dressy social function wear

I dislike the brand personally. I think Marks & Spencer's (a UK supermarket chain) makes better suits than most designers selling in the UK. And for the Armani money, you can get an alright MTM suit.

Gucci is even worse - plastic crap with gimmicks (like 5 buttons on the sleeve) that really should not be worn by a discerning gentleman.

This thread is ridiculous. Yes there's a difference in quality between shoes from Walmart, Cole Haan, and Allen Edmonds. There's a difference in quality between suits from Mens Wearhouse, Boss, and Canali.

An an Analyst you just need to choose a middle ground of decent fit and quality, and use common sense. No need to spend more than $150 on shoes, $50 on shirts, $30 on ties, $300 on suits, etc.

But definitely don't be the guy who wears blatantly shitty and out of style clothing at the office (yes these people get noticed). Some examples of fashion mistakes I've seen at the office: -an Analyst who wears pleated black khaki pants, with a button-collar yellow oxford shirt and blue t-shirt underneath, and worn out black wingtip oxfords. -an Associate who wears a custom-made suit and custom shirts, but with crappy square-toe Kenneth Coles