With the lure of free heating and hot drinks, workers are beginning to see an appeal to working in the office. The result? The return of a more polished look: the trouser suit is back.
Sales are booming on the high street. Reiss is reporting record sales of its black Haisley suit with strong sales of its white Taite tuxedo suit too. “We are selling twice as many suits as we did prior to Covid,” says the womenswear director, Una Joyce. It’s a similar story at Marks & Spencer, Jigsaw and John Lewis.
It’s a trend that appeals to multiple generations. From Gen Z and millennials at startups to Gen X and even Boomers who aren’t quite ready to retire just yet, the appetite for suiting spans all.
John Lewis’s first director of design for fashion, Queralt Ferrer joined the brand in June, two years into its Partnership Plan, a strategy aimed at reaching £400m in profits by 2025. Her first port of call on her revamp mission? An expansion of the tailoring category that now includes fabrics such as velvets and, for the very first time, a tweed blazer. “It was important for me to introduce key season fabrics to the customer,” she says. “The tweed is a little Chanel-esque. Customers want things that feel relevant. We are seeing phenomenal demand for it.”
Ferrer wants to offer suiting that is wearable across different age brackets. She is finding that younger women are styling pieces such as the black velvet blazer and matching wide-legged trousers with a T-shirt while an older woman might wear it with a silky blouse.
After two years of lockdown, there’s been a shift in how women want to dress for work. This is reflected on television shows such as BBC One’s Industry, which features rich bankers behaving badly. When the fictional office re-opens we see Pierpoint’s graduates including Harper (Myha’la Herrold) swap her dressing gown for a navy pinstripe suit while as Yasmin (Marisa Abela) grows in confidence she ditches her signature tight pencil skirts and blouses for a looser beige two-piece from Maje.
It’s a trend that works just as hard outside working hours too. On the Me & Em website, every suit pictured is styled in two ways – one look for the office, one for the weekend – to showcase the genre’s versatility and celebrities are already on board with the non-corporate take. The model Bella Hadid is regularly photographed in a slouchy suit styled with chunky-soled boots. Colourful suits were a standout trend at both the Academy Awards and the Met Gala earlier this year.
Come party season expect to see them everywhere. Jigsaw’s creative director, Jo Sykes, says that “standout tailoring” is already up 30% year on year, outperforming its classic suiting lines. A bright magenta tuxedo with matching satin-trimmed trousers has a waiting list of more than 1,600 people.
“No one is interested in things like luxe loungewear or relaxed denim at the moment,” says Sykes. “Because of the cost of living, people don’t want to spend money on casual pieces. They want investment pieces and things they can wear that make them feel good.”
