My Suit's at the Cleaners

I just finished reading J.R. Ward's Lover Revealed. It was good. Very good. I'm not going to review it right now, though. Except, it got me to thinking about men in suits.

See, Ward tends to dress some of her characters in a lot of high-end clothing brands which she name drops ad nauseum. As much as I love the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, this is the one nitpick that pulls me out of the story, full stop, and I'm kind of wishing she'd knock it off. We get the point. Butch and Phury are snappy dressers. Got. It.

But the thing is, I'm not so sure how I feel about a man in a suit. Maybe it's the backlash of the metrosexual fad, in which men spent entirely too much time contemplating the merits of various hair products and not enough time taking out the garbage. Or maybe it's the fact that business casual started to take serious root just as I was entering the work force and anyone showing up in the office in a suit was suspected of job interviewing. But for some reason, I just don't find men in well tailored suits to be the epitome of The Sexy.

Sure, I can dig a great tuxedo on a totally hot guy any day.


*swoon*

But for the most part, I like my men clad casually. Give me a pair of faded Levi's and a white tee shirt and I'm good to go.


(Besides, I'm pretty sure that Daniel Craig would look amazing in a clown suit, thus my theory that it is 100% the man inside the suit and not the suit itself that pulls off the look.)

Maybe it's just my rube-ishness at work. See, I wouldn't know an RL Black Label from a JC Penney special unless someone was standing next to me and pointed out the differences. Therefore, I don't get that tingle that must come in knowing that one man's suit cost $5,000 while another's only $249.99, thus missing the whole power-as-desirable-trait aspect. Yes, I can appreciate when a suit is well-tailored and fits a man nicely. But I think most men look uncomfortable in suits, and people in discomfort are very rarely sexy. I suppose I need to head downtown more often and hang out at the Chicago Board of Trade where the men wear suits like underwear.

My husband wears a suit whenever he has to go to visit a client. He looks nice enough, but I think he looks just as good or better in his jeans and hockey jersey. He certainly feels better in the latter.

I won't go into the disaster that the wrong tie can wreak on the well-suited man. Are ties ever sexy?