Dappered

Affordable Men's Style

Would you wear it? The full corduroy suit

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Rockin’ Sartorial Corduroy Sportcoat and matching pant – $208icon ($420)

The good news is corduroy suits are cotton, comfortable, and relatively cheap.  The bad news is you risk ending up looking like a couch.  From 1973.

Cord pants are standard, cord blazers are pretty common too, but a full corduroy suit is the seersucker of fall and winter.  Not everyone feels right in it.  And if you don’t feel right in it, you’re not going to look right in it.  The last thing you want is a thick wale (the width of the individual lines) but smaller wale cord suits made something of a comeback last year.  They’re still around, and many are on sale.

Unlike a standard wool suit, these should be much easier to break up and use separately.  But you’re just not going to wear it all the time.  Once every two weeks, maybe, during one third of the year?  But that’s together as a suit.  Maybe you’d wear the jacket and pants separate from each other once or twice a week?

So would you wear it?  Or would you stick to something less retro like a flannel for cold weather slightly-laid-back suiting?  Leave your answer in the comments below.

L.L. Bean Signature’s Cord Suit.  Starting at  $254 for the set.

Comments

  7. It’s kind of an eccentric professor look. The sort of thing you can get away with when you work in a “professional clothing optional” occupation… with tenure. I like corduroy a lot but I think I’ll save mine for a sport coat and odd trousers. 

  8. Can’t say as I would, but it really cries out for a dark, colorful, polyester paisley shirt.

  11. I couldn’t wear it.  It doesn’t seem to jive with the modern age (but then again “jive” probably hasn’t been used in this century either)

  14. I believe “jive” when standing on its own is acceptable, “jive turkey” is dated.  Pickin’ up what I’m layin’ down?

  15. I really want to say that I would wear it, but I know that I wouldn’t. Just don’t have that much sprezzatura (my new favorite word, basically Italian for swag) yet. I would wear the crap out of the separates, but as a complete suit I just don’t think I could do it.

  18. I would wear it.

    After investing in an ironic beard, tweed bow tie, a mandolin, and a case of PBR. seriously though, it’s nice in concept, but in execution I just don’t think I’d be able to shake the continual thought that I must look like a member of the Fleet Foxes.

  20. I might wear it.  But I would be cautious wearing it on a day where I would have to walk briskly from place to place.  Walk to fast and you will attract badgers.  And we all know, badgers will #$^& you up. And I would probably go with a tan corduroy instead of black or blue. Blue looks to FFA-ish.

  27. My take (an appalling butchery of Tropic Thunder): You can get away with a corduroy top, or corduroy pants, but nobody goes full Corduroy!

    BTW, spookily I was going to write to say I found this Haggar Corduroy jacket at Amazon for a paltry $89 with free Prime shipping.  I’m normally a 48L and I have to say the fit is great – no trip to the tailor.  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WHVQD2 Let me know if you’d like photos.

  28. The ones in the photos above, probably not.  But if it’s well-tailored and the right colour/wale, like http://www.thestyleblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/reIMG_8240.jpg — definitely!

  30. I’d rock it.  Actually, I tried on the jacket in store a few weeks ago… My pockets are lucky they didn’t have my size pants.

  32.     I tend to agree with some of the other gentlemen– I just don’t think I could pull it off, as much as I might like to.  *Maybe* the black one, maaybe.  I feel that if I tried the brown, I would look, as Joe so aptly put it, like a couch.  I’m down for trying the jackets as separates (and am for the first time in my life confident I could do so without feeling like my grandpa) but that as far as I can go. 
         Speaking of which, you say “The last thing you want is a thick wale.”  While shopping, I’ve seen them advertised with a number 11 wale, 14 wale.  How does the scale work and what should I look for?

  33. I think you would have to be over 40 years old and a bit husky to pull this off.  As a 5’10, 130 pound, 25 year old, there’s no way.  The jacket alone, perhaps.

  34. “Studied carelessness” is the English definition of sprezzatura, and I don’t think you’re using it quite right there.

    From Wikipedia:

    Sprezzatura is an Italian word originating from Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.”[1] It is the ability of the courtier to display “an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them.”