Class Action Suits

Until a few years ago men’s suits changed slowly, almost imperceptibly with the seasons.

Shoulders would widen or narrow ever so slightly. Lapels would shrink by a hair.

Then along came Giorgio Armani.

Suddenly--by menswear standards--suits went to extremes, developing relaxed silhouettes. Shoulder pads on jackets grew to exaggerated dimensions. Pants billowed out with multiple pleats. Fabrics went from crisp to fluid. The net effect was that of an oversized, drapey garment. For men it was a radical departure from the fitted, classic looks that had altered but little over the years.

Those relaxed styles of yesterday, however, are already looking somewhat slouchy today. After pushing the edge of the fashion envelope, suit designers are pulling back from their exaggerated looks.

By spring, the change will be in full flower. Suit jackets will be taken in--slightly. Shoulders will shrink. Yet suits will still maintain some of the easy-going loose fit bestowed on them by Armani.

“There was a trend or fad of people leaning toward Italian-style suits with extended shoulders. Now that’s fading,” says Bjorn Sedleniek, owner of P.O.S.H., a men’s clothing store in Fashion Island Newport Beach.

“We’re coming back to a classic, natural-shoulder look. It’s already happening in Europe.”

Orange County businessmen have long favored the natural shoulder as their silhouette of choice, he says. P.O.S.H.’s No. 1 seller remains “the most basic of basics:” a suit that has a single-breasted jacket with natural shoulders and a two-button stance that comes in navy wool and other traditional fabrics ($395).

“We have guys buy four or five of them at a time,” Sedleniek says.

But relaxed suit silhouettes won’t disappear entirely.

“Manufacturers have relaxed everything--the button stance is lower, the shoulders are still wider and the overall silhouette is a more comfortable look,” Sedleniek says. “Even the most conservative manufacturer, Southwick, which designed suits for Bill Clinton and George Bush, made suits with slightly extended shoulders for spring.”

Clinton and Bush represent two competing suit trends. At the start of the campaign, both were seen in classic suits with natural shoulders. Two months before the election, Clinton traded his in for an extended shoulder model, Sedleniek says.

“It became real obvious. The coat didn’t look like it really fit. It was breaking in front,” he says. “Maybe someone convinced him to adopt a younger look.”

P.O.S.H.’s charcoal gray glen plaid single-breasted suit with natural shoulders ($625) by Southwick is typical of the style sported by Bush. In contrast, a black and white hound’s tooth suit that has a single-breasted jacket with extended shoulders ($675) is pure Clinton.

“He didn’t look very good in it,” Sedleniek says.

No matter who won the clothing contest, the presidential campaign renewed many men’s interest in traditional styles.

“We’re seeing a lot of updated, classic looks,” said Rick Lamitie, partner with David Rickey and Co., a men’s custom tailors in Costa Mesa that counts numerous major sports figures, such as Magic Johnson, and Orange County movers and shakers among its clientele.

“Shoulders are coming in a bit, although we never got way out there,” he says.

They steer clients toward suits with a crisp, but not exaggerated, shoulder.

“A suit with more of a V-cut will always look best on a man,” Lamitie says. “It can make a guy look like he has nice shoulders and a slimmer middle. The slightly wider shoulder cut can hide 20 pounds, whereas a narrow shoulder cut makes anyone who has anything around the middle look like a pear.”

He shows off a navy three-button single-breasted jacket with gently extended shoulders and pants with inverted box pleats in front.

“You’ll see a lot of these in the next year,” he says.

David Schwartz, another partner with David Rickey, expects designers to come out with even narrower shoulders in upcoming seasons-”but they won’t stick.”

“For a fashion trend to stick it must look good on the average guy. Narrow shoulders make most guys look like they have a small chest and a bigger belly,” Schwartz says.

Both double-breasted or single-breasted jackets, especially those with a three-button stance, are in vogue, he says. Trousers have double or triple pleats with fuller knees that taper in at the ankles.

“This is the closest we’ve come to the Bogart era,” Schwartz says. “It’s that cosmopolitan gangster look--the crisp shoulders, classic hounds-tooth checks, window panes and wider pin stripes.”

David Rickey’s custom suits range from $800 to $1,100 for the Executive collection of suits made both by hand and machine and $1,200 on up for the Platinum line of entirely hand-made suits cut from higher-end fabrics.

The fabrics used in suiting are also undergoing alterations.

“We’re going from a lot of European-style fabrics--the drapey wool crepes with tone-on-tone surface interest--to flat weaves. Worsted wools in classic fabrications are in demand,” Sedleniek says. Men are returning to solid navy, grays, steel blues or traditional patterns such as pin stripes and glen plaids.

Ties, too, are returning to conservative prints after several years of wild graphics. Expect smaller patterns and the return of stripes--another off-shoot of the presidental campaign.

“Those guys were always wearing striped ties,” Sedleniek says. The big change in ties won’t take place until fall ’93. That’s when Ralph Lauren will again go to extremes by bringing in a narrower tie. Sedleniek dislikes the trendier ties.

“Your entire tie collection shouldn’t have to be obsolete,” he says. “We’ll stay within the norm.”

In the past few years, men’s fashion has moved faster than it has during Sedleniek’s 35 years in the business, he says.