“I think the tuxedo, or just classic suits in general, have an undeniable power,” bespoke tailor Mark Powell tells me. 

At present, many would disagree. Every awards season, the same ritual begins. Women arrive on the red carpet dressed as essentially everything, and most men arrive in black tie. The tuxedo is then repeatedly dragged through a dreadful online discourse which attempts to depict it as boring and generic.

Could it be that the classic menswear suit isn’t ‘giving nothing’ but is actually giving too much?

We never really look at someone like Tom Ford on the red carpet and wish he was wearing something ‘more unique’ than a suit. His outfit is always perfect because it follows exactly who he is. Elegance never goes out of style or becomes boring. The idea that the suit is dull is less a truth than a failure of literacy. We have not exhausted the suit. We have simply forgotten how to look at it.

The suit is cunning. Its apparent simplicity is a trap. It deceives us through its achromatic appearance, pretending to be neutral and restrained. But in reality, it is one of the most chameleonic ensembles in fashion. It morphs perfectly according to the wearer. Their posture, confidence, self-perception, vanity, discipline, awkwardness, charm. All of these are suddenly hyper-visible. On one man, the suit is can be sex. On another, it is bureaucracy. Mourning. Performance. Power. Or his mother forcing him to attend a wedding.

The suit’s real cruelty is that it does not decorate the wearer so much as interrogate him. It asks: do you know how to stand? Do you understand your own shoulders? Are you comfortable being seen? Do you possess the gallantry the garment implies? If not, you remain completely exposed as such.

“It can wear you, instead of the other way around,” says Powell. “It’s only a powerful statement if you yourself feel empowered by what you’re wearing.”

A suit is not boring because it lacks expression. A suit becomes boring when the man wearing it lacks presence. Unlike louder garments, it will not perform on his behalf. And unlike the casual fluidity of contemporary menswear,  it will not offer him comforts. 

A badly worn suit a very common and very tragic sight. Not because the suit itself has failed, but because the man inside it appears to be apologising for wearing one. His bowtie almost always looks rented in spirit, even if not actually rented.

“A lot of men, they wear a suit to work, but they wear it like a set of overalls,” Powell says.

Perhaps the great misunderstanding is that many people know the suit only through its strictest contemporary associations: office wear, finance bros, school uniforms, job interviews, politicians. They see the suit as a garment of institutions which they must obey. A symbol of the father, the boss, the banker. The man who also finds us with his emails, to then say ‘circle back’. It doesn’t come as a surprise that most young people perceive it as a conservative punishment, because it’s been worn too often by people who drained it of its glamour. If young men have never learned the suit as pleasure, only as obligation, it is expected for them to find it unnatural.

But the suit has also clothed jazz musicians, dandies, aristocrats, poets, rock stars and women who understood its erotic authority better than most men ever did. 

Women in suits often show the suit’s power more clearly because they do not inherit it as default uniform, so when they do wear it, it’s because it comes from within. From Marlene Dietrich and Grace Jones to Tilda Swinton, and Cate Blanchett, women in suits often exhibit its power more clearly because they have not inherited it as a default uniform. So when they do wear it, it has to come from within. 

But with definitions of masculinity altering throughout the past few years, we should no longer assume that every man inherits it as a default uniform either. Today, the men that can pull off a classic black tie without looking forced are nearly as few as the women that can. 

The red carpet problem is not that men wear suits, but that they ear them passively. They arrive in black tie as though fulfilling a contractual requirement. The suit looks chosen by committee, approved by a stylist, tolerated by the actor and forgotten the second he left the hotel room. It lacks any tension and pleasure, or real belief. A good tuxedo also does not need to be reinvented through gimmick the way it often is, through absurd proportions, a giant brooch, or shirtlessness. All it needs is conviction. The wearer has to understand that restraint does not mean the absence of drama, it is the movement of drama under pressure.  The suit is always in a perpetual wait for men with enough elegance, confidence or madness to properly inhabit it. But these are few. 

‘I don’t want to give u any gossip’ says Powell.

’Certainly not, go ahead.’ I tell him. 

‘So I had a rap artist a couple of years ago, I won't mention his name, and he was brought in by his dad for an award show. He was an English guy, he was very successful, and he's an artist who has 100 million followers on Spotify, or something of the sort, I don’t know. Anyway, we do the suit, his dad said he looked great wearing it. Then I see photos of him, he turned up to the event, he didn’t wear it. You see, your mind needs to be open towards it, the kids today, their perception of it is completely altered compared to a while back. I remember the rap and R&B scenes about 15 years ago, someone like Usher who I’ve tailored for, and many others loved formal tailoring. They thought of it as cool and rebellious.’ 

Rebellion is contextual. Once, the suit may have represented conformity. Yet in the casual context of today where most look like they dressed for going to lie down , the decision to wear tailoring when one is not constrained to do so can feel almost perverse. In a landscape of jerseys and jeans, the suit can become one of the most powerful forms of rebellion.