and a move back to suits and ties is making top-end apparel retailers relieved and
glad their work has paid off.
"I have seven tailors in the back working seven tailors, altering suits," says
Toronto's Korry owner Saul Korman, who previously employed four tailors. "My
motto is no suit, no shirt, no tie, no job.' And that's what's happening exactly. It's
changed so fast."
Korman estimates his suit sales have increased 18 per cent in the last three to
four months. He's involved in a committee promoting Back to Business Dress-Up
Thursdays,' which aims to get more people to wear a suit to work. He says he's
starting to see businesspeople demand that employees dress professionally. He
says a shift in the political climate helped too.
"When President Bush got into power and said, Everybody's going to wear a suit,
shirt and tie,' that certainly didn't hurt us," Korman says. "Many of the larger
corporations are now changing. Some of them even dropped the casual Fridays."
"Dress-up Thursdays" looks like a grass-roots movement. But it was launched 11
months ago by Vincent Rua, who owns three menswear stores in New York state.
Saul Korman has been nudging the Canadian version along for almost as long.
"Casual Friday" itself is the result of a 1992 marketing campaign by Levi Strauss,
conceived to sell their Dockers chino pants and spurred principally by Levi's
mailing a "Guide to Casual Businesswear" to 30,000 corporate human resources
managers.
David Howell, vice-president of NDP Group Canada, tracks suit sales. He's noticed
the movement back to wearing a suit and tie to work. The number of suits sold from
June 2000 to June 2001 increased 8.3 per cent, but the dollar figure is down about
10 per cent. "What it means is that [discount menswear retailer] Moores is doing
better than Harry Rosen. There are more suits being sold, but considerably
cheaper."
In turn, Howell says, sales of casual clothes are dropping off. "We had huge growth
in golf, polos in ladies and men's over the last four or five years. And khakis the
same. We watched casual pants grow, jeans decline. We thought that casual
pants were going to exceed jean sales and they haven't done that yet."
He says this is the first year he's seen an increase in the number of suits sold in
the last five years and attributes that to retailers selling cheaper suits the
average amount spent has dropped to $211 from $270 two years ago.
Korman believes the sudden resurgence has more to do with young people
wanting to look dapper. "I think what's happening is young people don't want to
dress like their fathers. They want to dress like their grandfathers. Because their
fathers are dressing sloppy and they want to go back to dressing. It's a whole
recycling."
He sees so-called "business casual" evolving into a dressier, more elegant look,
and says the days of showing up for casual Fridays in jeans are over.
Norman Colangelo, manager of Lou Myles Disegnatore, says he's noticing more
and more customers are looking for suits. "In the last season, everything's
dressing up again. I think that's the way business should be run and they're
coming back to it," he says. "You're still going have your tech guys walking around
in Dockers and whatever. But the business people, the people who run the
business end, are dressing up. They're dressing for business. The guys who are
sitting behind the computer all day long, that's another story. Anybody who's in
business, they're dressing [up]."
