I don’t know about you, but my old suits shrink while they’re hanging in my closet. When I go to put on one of my old favorite suits, one that fit like a glove the last time I wore it, it’s inexplicably way too tight. Mrs. Simple Justice implores me to lose weight, but she refuses to understand that this isn’t about me, it’s about the suit.
Now I’m a bold dresser for a lawyer. My suits run the full color gamut, from blue to gray. Some have pinstripes. Some don’t. I have a seersucker for the summer, when I’m feeling particularly wild. I don’t wear it with a bowtie or a boater, however, because that would just be pandering. I’m no Tucker Carlson.
So what should you do when those evil Brooks Brothers have taken back that bit of spare girth?
Help someone out. I’ve done this for years, but I’m reminded by a television promotion by a local mens clothier that there are many people out there who are in serious need of a suit to wear to interview for a job. They have struggled to gain the skills, education or credentials to perform the work, but lack the resources to purchase some decent duds for the interview.
Hey, just because that suit shrunk and no longer fits you doesn’t mean it won’t fit someone else. Most of us have so many suits that they rarely wear out, and are often in excellent shape when they hit the shrinking point. Don’t throw them out. Don’t stuff them in the boxes for used clothing, just to be shredded and baled for some scoundrel pretending to be a not-for-too-much-profit.
Find a place in your community where those who are struggling to improve their lives, overcome adversity and be the type of person we all claim to want them to be goes to find appropriate interview clothing. Ask your gardener, maid, nanny, whoever (see how elistist I can be?), if they know of anyone who could use the suit. Find a way to help. If you can’t do it because it’s the right thing to do, then do it because it’s your obligation to help those less fortunate. Noblesse Oblige, baby. You will feel better for it.
Sermon over.
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Great idea Scott. When I was a p.d. I fondly remember a very successful private attorney looking at my suit and asking me if I was “still a p.d?” When I told him I was he said, “But you dress like a private lawyer?” I didn’t tell him that my suit was from Goodwill, dressed up with a nice tie from the Harold’s clearance rack.
But it taught me a good lesson. I didn’t have to spend a fortune to “blend in.” Now that I’m not a p.d. anymore, I don’t have the time to sift through the goodwill racks (where you have to look at 50 threadbare suits to find the one that looks new and doesn’t “hang on your arm like a cheap suit” as David Bowie once said) but would appreciate it when a person handed down an old suit just as I would if they handed down a lesson they learned.
Just as I’d rather not relearn a lesson they did the hard way, I’d rather not have to pay full price for a suit during those first, rough years of solo practice.
Just make sure you’re not giving away a “Herb Tarlick” suit like the one my dad once tried to give me!
Scott, this is a great suggestion and a wonderful habit on your part.
This spring my husband and I gave away about half of what we own. We’re now entering the third month of an open-ended road trip (he’s a telecommuter, I’m a freelancer), and if something didn’t fit with us in the Mini Cooper or in the 10×15 storage unit that’s holding our ’66 Bronco, it had to go.
When I went through my shrinking clothes, half of my work wardrobe went to a 61-year-old friend in politics who on over 20,000 doors canvassing in her last election, and lost so much weight that she is swimming in her work clothes (but she fully expects to gain some weight back outside canvassing season, and doesn’t want to spend a fortune on a temporary wardrobe). The suits that were too small for her went to a friend’s 24-year-old sister who had just moved to town and was setting up job interviews with nothing to wear and no money for a suit. (There’s a reason they tell women to buy classic professional clothes!)
The other things we had to find homes for went to other friends (it is amazing the proportion of household goods that won’t stand-up to long-term storage sans air conditioning), to the local food bank, or to Diversity Thrift, our fabulous local thrift store that supports programs in our community.
It feels great giving stuff away, and it also feels great to get rid of the guilt of facing down those shrinking suits that fill up the closet, too.
(The last time we did a really big move, I gave a bunch of my shrunken work clothes to a halfway house for women in DC, via friends who work there, and once again, the suits were going to be helping women out with job interviews, too.)
If you want to weed out your clutter, here’s one other thing you can do: most frequent business travelers I know have a drawer or a box at home full of shampoo soaps and shampoos–that they never use. My home town food bank director loves getting these: “fancy” toiletries can be an unexpected treat for the patrons of the food bank.