Flashback: Suits you sir!

June is Flashback month, the time were we look back at some old posts from another of my (now defunct) blogs. In today's Flashback we return to a time when there was only one bag of fruit in the whole house..

I could count on one hand the number of suits that currently hang in my wardrobe – and still have enough fingers to play pretty much most of what my guitar teacher has been showing me. Because in a world of high fashion, I have but one entry in the suit stakes.

Suits you sir!

It was bought 4 years ago in a hurried need to look sharp as a wedding mc and the same black pinstripe number has been used for cocktail nights, client nights, trips to the races, fancy dinners, other weddings, funerals and anytime the words ‘Dress to impress’ applied.

The trouble is, while it might have impressed back in the day, its days of cutting edge style and +4 wooing are long gone. (Actually come to think of it, I think that ended the day I threw it on). Now thanks to me getting off my ass to exercise, combined with age and the amount of abuse the once pricy two piece has taken over the events and years, it now looks like a oversized court suit. Like when a young offender gets done for hooning and he borrows an ill fitting suit off his father to appear before a jury in. It’s big, it doesn’t fit properly and I feel like a mafia goon in it. And if that’s how I feel dressed to kill, I can only imagine what I truly look like it.

Not this sharp

So now that it’s creeping closer and closer to my wedding day, you can imagine how much fun I’m having finding something to wear – when my length of experience is a throwback to pinstripes that the merchant was probably keen to get rid of back in the day. So it was with trepidation that I walked into a Myer sale, found a tasteful dark grey number (by some brand called Flair) to throw on and almost fell backwards in the changing room (and took a Ric Flair face first bump to the canvas!)
The damn thing fit!

And when I say fit, I don’t mean that I can stick both arms into it and still breath and talk at the same time, I mean that it actually did what a good suit was supposedly supposed to do – it felt good to wear and miracles of miracles, it actually made me look decent! (Well as decent as a guy can look unshaved and with a 10 buck t-shirt with a $400 suit on top of it.) It was comfortable, it was stylish, I felt like kicking the snot out of Wall Street and for the first time in a long time, I was wearing a suit that wasn’t thick enough to double as double as riot armour for the local police force like the padded pinstripe jobby.

I felt this proud

All the sweating, swearing and lifting that order in the back shed with the heavy bag and the weights bench seemed to have finally paid off – I now seem to possess the physique that suit wearing denizens should probably have (or at least gentlemen that wear Flair suits I spose).
Of course with my Atlas proportioned legs the pants were too small so my body had effectively ruined the chance to pick up the two piece while it was on sale (Sorry, just what’s on the rack, no separates...) but I walked away a happy man.
Because I’ve discovered it is possible to look good at my own wedding.
And I’ve finally realised why there’s a whole heap of ill fitting pinstripe suits taking up space at the local Salvos.
It’s been a good life ill fitting suit that I’ve used for everything...but a guy’s gotta grow up sometime...