Foreword

Welcome to Washington! At least, I am assuming you are in the DC area if you are reading this. There aren’t many other places in this country so concentrated with bureaucrats that a sartorial guide would be necessary. Perhaps the business and financial centers of major cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles would have a similar need for guidance, but that’s not what we’re here for. You’re here because you got your first job in the District at some non-profit, a lobbying firm, or federal institution. Maybe an unpaid internship on the Hill, maybe a political appointment after a career spent wholly elsewhere in the country. Or, you may have been called back into the office five days a week after years of glorious telework—my condolences!

Regardless of your origin and destination, there are the basics when starting a new phase of your life. Things like finding a place to live, learning the transportation options, and experiencing the culture. But all that’s common to any move, and there are certainly guides for that elsewhere. No, we shall focus on a more unique aspect of your new life in DC: how you are going to dress yourself. This can be a confusing place, because while the tableau encompasses a broad spectrum of options, being properly dressed does matter for the different settings in which you find yourself. Just as you would want to know that even executives in California dress casually in formal settings, you don’t want to be caught unaware wearing the wrong thing in the wrong place.

The world has largely been moving away from suits and more formal business wear over the past fifty or so years, but time moves more slowly in a swamp. They remain an essential element of the wardrobe. That often presents a problem for newcomers given the lack of such requirements elsewhere. Finding a suit may get lost in the shuffle of other aspects of moving and beginning a new career. All too often I see people wearing ill-suited options, the department store defaults that simply check the box. Perhaps that is why many have a dislike for suits in general: they have only ever experienced poor quality, ill-fitting, and uncomfortable variants.

It does not have to be this way. As with anything in life, there are options, and the added cost for better quality is most certainly justified here. Knowing what that means, though, is another question entirely, one this treatise seeks to answer. I will endeavor to provide you, the reader, with the basic knowledge needed to have a conversation about suits, from the terminology that defines them to recommendations for the different customization options.

I need to make an important disclaimer here: this guide is for suits that would be labeled as “men’s” common in the western world. Suiting is critical in this town no matter how you identify, but my experience is limited to the male frame and I would not want to claim expertise I do not have. “Women’s” suits are just as worthy of discussion, and I hope to read that book when it is written.