🔗 Share this article

Coming of age in London during the noughties, I was constantly immersed in a world of suits. You saw them on City financiers rushing through the Square Mile. You could spot them on dads in the city's great park, kicking footballs in the golden light. At school, a inexpensive grey suit was our mandatory uniform. Historically, the suit has served as a uniform of seriousness, projecting power and performance—traits I was told to aspire to to become a "man". Yet, before recently, people my age appeared to wear them less and less, and they had all but vanished from my consciousness.

Then came the incoming New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Taking his oath of office at a private ceremony wearing a sober black overcoat, pristine white shirt, and a distinctive silk tie. Propelled by an ingenious campaign, he captivated the public's imagination unlike any recent mayoral candidate. Yet whether he was cheering in a hip-hop club or attending a film premiere, one thing was largely constant: he was almost always in a suit. Loosely tailored, modern with soft shoulders, yet conventional, his is a quintessentially professional millennial suit—that is, as common as it can be for a cohort that seldom chooses to wear one.

"The suit is in this strange place," says style commentator Derek Guy. "It's been dying a slow death since the end of the Second World War," with the significant drop coming in the 1990s alongside "the rise of business casual."

"It's basically only worn in the most formal settings: weddings, memorials, to some extent, legal proceedings," Guy explains. "It is like the kimono in Japan," in that it "fundamentally represents a tradition that has long retreated from everyday use." Numerous politicians "don this attire to say: 'I represent a politician, you can trust me. You should support me. I have legitimacy.'" Although the suit has traditionally conveyed this, today it enacts authority in the attempt of gaining public confidence. As Guy elaborates: "Since we're also living in a liberal democracy, politicians want to seem relatable, because they're trying to get your votes." To a large extent, a suit is just a nuanced form of drag, in that it enacts manliness, authority and even closeness to power.

Guy's words stayed with me. On the rare occasions I need a suit—for a ceremony or black-tie event—I dust off the one I bought from a Tokyo department store a few years ago. When I first selected it, it made me feel refined and expensive, but its slim cut now feels outdated. I suspect this feeling will be only too familiar for many of us in the diaspora whose families originate in somewhere else, particularly global south countries.

It's no surprise, the everyday suit has fallen out of fashion. Like a pair of jeans, a suit's silhouette goes through cycles; a particular cut can thus characterize an era—and feel quickly outdated. Take now: more relaxed suits, echoing Richard Gere's Armani in *American Gigolo*, might be in vogue, but given the price, it can feel like a significant investment for something destined to fall out of fashion within five years. But the attraction, at least in certain circles, persists: recently, department stores report tailoring sales increasing more than 20% as customers "shift from the suit being daily attire towards an appetite to invest in something special."

The Symbolism of a Mid-Market Suit

Mamdani's preferred suit is from a contemporary brand, a Dutch label that sells in a mid-market price bracket. "He is precisely a reflection of his background," says Guy. "A relatively young person, he's neither poor nor extremely wealthy." To that end, his moderately-priced suit will appeal to the demographic most inclined to support him: people in their 30s and 40s, college graduates earning middle-class incomes, often frustrated by the expense of housing. It's exactly the kind of suit they might wear themselves. Not cheap but not lavish, Mamdani's suits plausibly don't contradict his stated policies—which include a rent freeze, building affordable homes, and fare-free public buses.

"You could never imagine Donald Trump wearing this brand; he's a Brioni person," observes Guy. "As an immensely wealthy and was raised in that property development world. A power suit fits seamlessly with that elite, just as attainable brands fit naturally with Mamdani's constituency."

The legacy of suits in politics is extensive and rich: from a well-known leader's "shocking" beige attire to other national figures and their suspiciously impeccable, custom-fit appearance. Like a certain UK leader discovered, the suit doesn't just dress the politician; it has the potential to define them.

Performance of Normality and Protective Armor

Perhaps the key is what one scholar refers to the "performance of ordinariness", invoking the suit's long career as a uniform of political power. Mamdani's particular choice leverages a studied modesty, neither shabby nor showy—"conforming to norms" in an inconspicuous suit—to help him connect with as many voters as possible. But, experts think Mamdani would be cognizant of the suit's military and colonial legacy: "The suit isn't apolitical; historians have long pointed out that its modern roots lie in imperial administration." Some also view it as a form of protective armor: "I think if you're a person of color, you aren't going to get taken as seriously in these traditional institutions." The suit becomes a way of asserting credibility, particularly to those who might question it.

This kind of sartorial "changing styles" is hardly a recent phenomenon. Even iconic figures once donned formal Western attire during their early years. These days, certain world leaders have started exchanging their usual fatigues for a dark formal outfit, albeit one without the tie.

"In every seam and stitch of Mamdani's public persona, the tension between insider and outsider is visible."

The suit Mamdani chooses is highly symbolic. "As a Muslim child of immigrants of Indian descent and a democratic socialist, he is under pressure to meet what many American voters look for as a marker of leadership," says one expert, while at the same time needing to navigate carefully by "avoiding the appearance of an establishment figure betraying his non-mainstream roots and values."

Yet there is an acute awareness of the double standards applied to suit-wearers and what is interpreted from it. "That may come in part from Mamdani being a younger leader, skilled to assume different personas to fit the situation, but it may also be part of his multicultural background, where adapting between languages, customs and attire is common," it is said. "Some individuals can remain unremarked," but when women and ethnic minorities "seek to gain the authority that suits represent," they must meticulously navigate the codes associated with them.

Throughout the presentation of Mamdani's public persona, the dynamic between somewhere and nowhere, inclusion and exclusion, is evident. I know well the awkwardness of trying to fit into something not designed with me in mind, be it an inherited tradition, the society I was born into, or even a suit. What Mamdani's sartorial choices make evident, however, is that in public life, image is never neutral.