4 ms·

> dried up in just a few generations I think a decade from now they'll be analyzing the even more rapid demise of suits and briefcases. I remember when 'casua

> dried up in just a few generations I think a decade from now they'll be analyzing the even more rapid demise of suits and briefcases. I remember when 'casual dress Fridays' started. A leading men's shop took out full page ads in the newspaper extolling the virtue of looking professional vs. casual. They've since gone bankrupt.

pantaloony 6y ago
I hope we don’t lose the blazer and sport coat, at least. They’re great. Like a purse for men, but even better than that because you wear them. Unlike winter coats or hoodies they’re not shlubby-looking and you can wear (appropriate cloth & weight) ones in almost any weather. I’m OK with the suit going but damn, without those there’s not much left for guys to wear that’s not athletic wear of some kind or another (and hell, sport coats kinda are anyway)
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > there’s not much left for guys to wear that’s not athletic wear of some kind or another (and hell, sport coats kinda are anyway) Sport coats are athletic wear? To me, a sport coat is the same thing as a suit jacket, with the only difference being that a sport coat isn't the same color as your pants. It will literally become a suit jacket if you put on matching pants. For example, a sport coat, very much unlike athletic wear, will prevent you from raising your arms too high with its big squared shoulders.
  - jwilliamson 6y ago
    Sport coats evolved from riding and shooting jackets. I suspect some mobility has been lost over the years, but neither of those sports requiring raising your arms very high.
    - pantaloony 6y ago
      Exactly. A lot of what's available to men these days is former athletic/sporting wear turned "athleisure", then sometimes losing much of the original association: button-down collar shirts (there's a reason they're traditionally made of relatively tough Oxford cloth, and the collar's buttoned down so it stays that way during vigorous activity), polos (invented for tennis), sport coats (hunting, riding), "rugby" shirts (obviously). Then our most popular outerwear shirt, the T-shirt, used to be underwear with a strong military association, and came into common use the same way much of the rest of our modern fashion did: youth culture, which AFAIK is also how we got the blazer (dad's orphaned suit jackets) and two-button and especially two-roll-three suit jacket styles (kids wearing hand-me-down 3 and 4 button suits and orphaned jackets "casually" with fewer buttons done up).
      - DanBC 6y ago
        > and the collar's buttoned down so it stays that way during vigorous activity) Yes, but also the collar is buttoned down because those shirts don't have bones and are not starched.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      I would hate to shoulder a firearm wearing a modern sport coat. The dimensions of the parts of fabric and the orientation of the seams at the shoulder just don't permit the jacket to fit well while you to bring your hand out in front where it needs to be. I think more than a little mobility was lost (probably in the name of tighter fitment) over the years.
      - BanazirGalbasi 6y ago
        Actually, shooting jackets (for high-power shooting, at least) tend to fit pretty tight. The idea is that they help hold your body more rigid, giving you better stability when shooting at longer ranges (200, 300, and 600 yards). While I agree that sport coats aren't fit the same way, the lack of mobility is pretty common.
        throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        Sport coats are descended from the kind of thing well to do Europeans wore wear while shooting clays, riding horses, shooting at foxes while riding on horses, saying nasty things about the slavs, or whatever else well to do Europeans a century ago did for recreation. They aren't descended from shooting specific gear.
  - rags2riches 6y ago
    A well tailored jacket allows raising your arms. Straight off the rack jackets have abnormally wide arm holes to "fit" a wider range of people, which gets you the problems with raising your arms. See anything Fred Astair wore for a jacket you could move in.
- neutronicus 6y ago
  Shit, man, I'm just waiting for the Romper to cross over from women's fashion. Loose-fitting, linen combination shorts / tank? Yes, please! I'd even settle for denim if we must play at working on cars for women to accept it as fashionable. Maybe then I can finally have my cargo pockets back!
  - spitfire 6y ago
    It already did! Sean Connery wore one in one of the bond films.
WalterBright 6y ago
> demise of suits and briefcases I still have my Samsonite briefcase my dad got me as a graduation present. Having a hard shell, it is perfect for my laptop, wires, and other junk. I also enjoy being the only person with such a briefcase. A pic of what it looks like: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-SAMSONITE-Gray-Slim-Hard-Shell-BRIEFCASE-Retro-Attache-Case-No-Keys/193556696579?hash=item2d10e0ce03 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-SAMSONITE-Gray-Slim-Hard-Sh...
- LyndsySimon 6y ago
  I still want a Zero Halliburton briefcase. It would be wildly impractical for me, but I want it nonetheless.
  - mpclark 6y ago
    If it helps, I bought one around 25 years ago. It is a thing of great beauty. But I’ve used it maybe twice, and lugged it through maybe six house moves since then. All a bit pointless.
    - LyndsySimon 6y ago
      The biggest thing that’s stopping me is that I can’t decide if I want to buy one that’s in pristine condition (and never want to use it for fear of damaging it) or one that’s beat up and has tons of imperfections (and feel bad about spending so much money on something that looks like it fell out of the back of a van). I’ll likely eventually find one cheap at a flea market or estate sale. That, or end up buying a slim modern Pelican case for the same purpose.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    After watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xz1Ye8I9NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xz1Ye8I9NY I am tempted to set up a packet-switching network running something like https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 using Zero Halliburtons (or knockoffs) for framing. (alas, Concorde packet delivery no longer implemented.) TEUs for Jumbo Framing?
flywheel 6y ago
The cellphone killed the wristwatch.
rsynnott 6y ago
Hmm, I would have said the briefcase was essentially already dead. When's the last time you actually saw someone carrying one?
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  This morning. When I walked from my car to work. I used to (like a little more than a year ago, not back in the 90s or anything like that) ride the train with someone who carried one every day.
- retrac 6y ago
  Before everyone stopped taking the subway here, it was quite common for business commuters to be carrying a briefcase. Though some sort of casual/dressy tote bag is just as common these days.
ben7799 6y ago
Briefcases were pretty dead by the 1990s weren't they? I'm 43, I've never owned a brief case. My father had them in the 80s.. but he had a laptop by around 1990 and the briefcase disappeared. My father was an engineer and later manager in tech companies though, so maybe the briefcase hung around longer outside of the tech industry. I don't think I've ever seen a briefcase in my career, which essentially started in 1996.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Briefcases were pretty dead by the 1990s weren't they? I'm 47 and not only own a couple of soft-sided small briefcases, I still see small hardsided briefcases, and the larger wheeled briefcases regularly (well, less so since I've been working from home due to the pandemic, but...) > My father had them in the 80s.. but he had a laptop by around 1990 and the briefcase disappeared. Soft-sided briefcases that existed before laptops and laptop bags are essentially identical, but for the padding in the laptop compartment.

pantaloony 6y ago

I hope we don’t lose the blazer and sport coat, at least. They’re great. Like a purse for men, but even better than that because you wear them. Unlike winter coats or hoodies they’re not shlubby-looking and you can wear (appropriate cloth & weight) ones in almost any weather. I’m OK with the suit going but damn, without those there’s not much left for guys to wear that’s not athletic wear of some kind or another (and hell, sport coats kinda are anyway)

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> there’s not much left for guys to wear that’s not athletic wear of some kind or another (and hell, sport coats kinda are anyway) Sport coats are athletic wear? To me, a sport coat is the same thing as a suit jacket, with the only difference being that a sport coat isn't the same color as your pants. It will literally become a suit jacket if you put on matching pants. For example, a sport coat, very much unlike athletic wear, will prevent you from raising your arms too high with its big squared shoulders.
- jwilliamson 6y ago
  Sport coats evolved from riding and shooting jackets. I suspect some mobility has been lost over the years, but neither of those sports requiring raising your arms very high.
  - pantaloony 6y ago
    Exactly. A lot of what's available to men these days is former athletic/sporting wear turned "athleisure", then sometimes losing much of the original association: button-down collar shirts (there's a reason they're traditionally made of relatively tough Oxford cloth, and the collar's buttoned down so it stays that way during vigorous activity), polos (invented for tennis), sport coats (hunting, riding), "rugby" shirts (obviously). Then our most popular outerwear shirt, the T-shirt, used to be underwear with a strong military association, and came into common use the same way much of the rest of our modern fashion did: youth culture, which AFAIK is also how we got the blazer (dad's orphaned suit jackets) and two-button and especially two-roll-three suit jacket styles (kids wearing hand-me-down 3 and 4 button suits and orphaned jackets "casually" with fewer buttons done up).
    - DanBC 6y ago
      > and the collar's buttoned down so it stays that way during vigorous activity) Yes, but also the collar is buttoned down because those shirts don't have bones and are not starched.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    I would hate to shoulder a firearm wearing a modern sport coat. The dimensions of the parts of fabric and the orientation of the seams at the shoulder just don't permit the jacket to fit well while you to bring your hand out in front where it needs to be. I think more than a little mobility was lost (probably in the name of tighter fitment) over the years.
    - BanazirGalbasi 6y ago
      Actually, shooting jackets (for high-power shooting, at least) tend to fit pretty tight. The idea is that they help hold your body more rigid, giving you better stability when shooting at longer ranges (200, 300, and 600 yards). While I agree that sport coats aren't fit the same way, the lack of mobility is pretty common.
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        Sport coats are descended from the kind of thing well to do Europeans wore wear while shooting clays, riding horses, shooting at foxes while riding on horses, saying nasty things about the slavs, or whatever else well to do Europeans a century ago did for recreation. They aren't descended from shooting specific gear.
- rags2riches 6y ago
  A well tailored jacket allows raising your arms. Straight off the rack jackets have abnormally wide arm holes to "fit" a wider range of people, which gets you the problems with raising your arms. See anything Fred Astair wore for a jacket you could move in.
neutronicus 6y ago
Shit, man, I'm just waiting for the Romper to cross over from women's fashion. Loose-fitting, linen combination shorts / tank? Yes, please! I'd even settle for denim if we must play at working on cars for women to accept it as fashionable. Maybe then I can finally have my cargo pockets back!
- spitfire 6y ago
  It already did! Sean Connery wore one in one of the bond films.

WalterBright 6y ago

> demise of suits and briefcases I still have my Samsonite briefcase my dad got me as a graduation present. Having a hard shell, it is perfect for my laptop, wires, and other junk. I also enjoy being the only person with such a briefcase. A pic of what it looks like: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-SAMSONITE-Gray-Slim-Hard-Shell-BRIEFCASE-Retro-Attache-Case-No-Keys/193556696579?hash=item2d10e0ce03 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-SAMSONITE-Gray-Slim-Hard-Sh...

LyndsySimon 6y ago
I still want a Zero Halliburton briefcase. It would be wildly impractical for me, but I want it nonetheless.
- mpclark 6y ago
  If it helps, I bought one around 25 years ago. It is a thing of great beauty. But I’ve used it maybe twice, and lugged it through maybe six house moves since then. All a bit pointless.
  - LyndsySimon 6y ago
    The biggest thing that’s stopping me is that I can’t decide if I want to buy one that’s in pristine condition (and never want to use it for fear of damaging it) or one that’s beat up and has tons of imperfections (and feel bad about spending so much money on something that looks like it fell out of the back of a van). I’ll likely eventually find one cheap at a flea market or estate sale. That, or end up buying a slim modern Pelican case for the same purpose.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  After watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xz1Ye8I9NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xz1Ye8I9NY I am tempted to set up a packet-switching network running something like https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 using Zero Halliburtons (or knockoffs) for framing. (alas, Concorde packet delivery no longer implemented.) TEUs for Jumbo Framing?

flywheel 6y ago

The cellphone killed the wristwatch.

rsynnott 6y ago

Hmm, I would have said the briefcase was essentially already dead. When's the last time you actually saw someone carrying one?

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
This morning. When I walked from my car to work. I used to (like a little more than a year ago, not back in the 90s or anything like that) ride the train with someone who carried one every day.
retrac 6y ago
Before everyone stopped taking the subway here, it was quite common for business commuters to be carrying a briefcase. Though some sort of casual/dressy tote bag is just as common these days.

ben7799 6y ago

Briefcases were pretty dead by the 1990s weren't they? I'm 43, I've never owned a brief case. My father had them in the 80s.. but he had a laptop by around 1990 and the briefcase disappeared. My father was an engineer and later manager in tech companies though, so maybe the briefcase hung around longer outside of the tech industry. I don't think I've ever seen a briefcase in my career, which essentially started in 1996.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Briefcases were pretty dead by the 1990s weren't they? I'm 47 and not only own a couple of soft-sided small briefcases, I still see small hardsided briefcases, and the larger wheeled briefcases regularly (well, less so since I've been working from home due to the pandemic, but...) > My father had them in the 80s.. but he had a laptop by around 1990 and the briefcase disappeared. Soft-sided briefcases that existed before laptops and laptop bags are essentially identical, but for the padding in the laptop compartment.