For decades together it was easy to decide the attire to office. Men wore dark suits with white or light colored shirts with tie. Then some companies, in a bid to make the employees more comfortable with the company’s culture, introduced the idea of wearing casual clothes once a week. On Fridays, the employees were allowed to go casual and wear clothes which were a study in contrast compared to the business attire mandated for the rest of the week. With the casual attire came the concept of the casual suits which was in between a formal business wear and casual wear.
This development in the code of business wear brought suits back into vogue and not just in the work environment. With one stroke casual suits became a versatile piece of clothing. They became fashionable and were considered to be a necessity in a man’s wardrobe. The versatility of the casual suit and the fact that its pieces can be worn together or separately makes it a very good investment indeed. Casual suits are made of less expensive material, like rayon and cotton, compared to other formal attires like tuxedos. Even then, they make you look polished and sleek when you go out or dress for a casual day at work.
The popularity of causal suits has ensured that they are now available everywhere from big multipurpose department stores to niche designer boutiques. However, before buying one of these suits, the following should be considered:
- Ask yourself “What is the purpose of buying the suit?” If it for use as office wear more often than not, a dark and classic version would be the right choice. If you are going to use it in pieces like just the jacket or any other piece you can let your imagination run wild and be more creative with design and color.
- It is important that you know what size you want. Ambiguity about the size can make the search for the right suit that much more difficult and time consuming.
- The idea behind wearing a casual suit is that it should be comfortable and should not strait jacket you. To avoid that, check that the sleeves are not too tight by raising your arm over your head and moving them all around. Make sure that the jacket is not too tight around your chest when you button it.
- The suit should be such that it looks good both buttoned and unbuttoned. You should be able to achieve your goal of looking relaxed when wearing the suit and especially so when you are wearing just the jacket.
- When you buy suits from large department stores or niche boutiques, the suits may not fit you exactly as you want it to fit. You have to alter the suit according to the fitting you want by a tailor. You may find that the larger department stores have in house tailors to do the alteration but they may be pricier than outside standalone tailor shops.