Bonfire of The Business Suits

By JAY COCKS

The sack, as suit, is fading fast, just as the sack, as fate, is becoming more common. All the brooding talk of recession and employment cutbacks has hit the men's fashion industry where it has hit the economy: right in the middle. The staple of the business -- the standard two- or three-piece suit that fits around the average frame as trimly as a swath of burlap around 50 lbs. of Pillsbury -- has lost its allure: too drab, too ordinary and, in an approaching crunch, too superfluous. What's already in the closet is good enough for now, and if it's not -- if a man has the cash and a need for flash -- he's reaching way upscale, to Armani and Ralph Lauren and the heady heights of bespoke tailoring. The Europhile tailored look that belonged to the hard- eyed Gordon Gekkos of this world is moving into the mainstream.

This leaves the time-honored bastion of sartorial conservatism -- the merchants of the midrange $400 business garment -- scrambling for a new look and a fresh idea. The trend is against them and so, for the moment, are the numbers. Hartmarx Corp., which owns middle-income retail stores like Wallachs in New York and Baskin in Chicago as well as Hart Schaffner & Marx, purveyors of off-the-peg businessman style for more than 100 years, has been enduring a three-year slump even though it retains an 11% share of the U.S. men's suit market. Brooks Brothers posted a 41% drop in operating profits for the past fiscal year. A spokesman for Marks & Spencer, the British department-store outfit that now owns Brooks, blamed "difficult trading conditions and severe price cutting by department stores."

That may be, but Brooks has of late tried to get with the new fashion program, which is a little like watching your Great-Uncle Roger show up for a guest shot on Yo! MTV Raps. The standard-issue Brooks Ivy League sack has been supplemented with svelter models priced from $395 to $695 that offer a little trim of the trousers and some tuck at the waist, so the suit looks more Polo and less Organization Man. It was Ralph Lauren who modified and merchandised the Brooks Brahmin look into his own house style, which might be called Long Island Anglo: jackets more suppressed in the waist and side vented, trousers as often buoyed by suspenders as not.

Now the Brit look, or variations on it, is everywhere, along with the softer, more soigne tailoring of the French and Italian variety. One recent Wallachs ad trumpeted the virtues of a Christian Dior suit (at $550), a store staple for years even though Wallachs' buyers managed to turn Dior's Gallic glitz into a kind of standard broker bland.

While they have been drifting away from their former shape, men have also been toying with new colors. The serviceable old grays and blues still predominate, but "you see more and more taupes on the commuter trains in Chicago," reports Kenneth Hoffman, chief executive of Hart Schaffner & Marx. "Now you can have an olive suit in six different shades." Can, and more men do.

Discount stores like Syms and Daffy's still draw customers by offering sharp suits (including some unsold European-designer merchandise) at sharply cut prices. Designers and retailers who work the high end with a continental flair are also flourishing. GFT USA, the American branch of the large Italian textile company that manufactures and distributes such lines as Armani and Joseph Abboud throughout the U.S., estimates that it has cornered 20% of the higher-priced men's market (anywhere from $800 up), about double its share of only five years ago. Says Alan Bilzerian, who sells his own line of stylishly quirky and comfortable men's wear from his Boston store: "The guy who's going to buy a traditional supersonic suit is not looking for something cheap. He's going to buy a very hand-tailored-looking garment. It can be a straight suit or a funny suit -- one that looks traditional but isn't. But it isn't going to be both. Now you have two different customers."

At $800 to $1,500 a shot, a Bilzerian suit can have a subtle sense of playfulness. There is nothing funny at New York City's Henry Stewart, where neither the prices ($3,500 to $4,500) nor the styling ("the Savile Row look") are good for laughs. Stewart, who made some of the smart costumes for Brian De Palma's upcoming film version of The Bonfire of the Vanities, says the demand for his suits with "a very smart, small waist, nice and snug off the hips with a full chest," is "increasing, but we just haven't got the men to meet it. There are no tailors around. I've got an eight- to nine-month backlog."

As the high end of men's fashion prospers and the middle ground looks for new style and stability, the only fashion constant is flux. Bilzerian talks about suits in shades of aubergine and pine green; even Hart Schaffner & Marx's Hoffman waxes evangelical about pleated pants as "a major fashion direction." To hear him tell it, it's only a matter of time until the Hartmarx man looks like a second cousin to the Duke of Windsor: "British is hot right now. You're going to see more 11-in. side vents, ticket pockets . . ." Could it be the beginning of another peacock revolution, the biggest ! change in men's fashion since the '70s? Anything's possible -- except the return of the Nehru jacket, the one garment that will likely remain at the back of the closet, even in hard times.

With reporting by Kathryn Jackson Fallon/New York