Guest post: Daemon Fairless’ Zoot suit

This guest post was submitted by Daemon Fairless, the author of Mad Blood Stirring: The Inner Lives of Violent Men an intense, disturbing, compelling and essential book about masculinity and violence (I was fortunate enough to direct the audio version). Daemon and I have become fast friends recently due to a shared concern with dress and why it matters.

Pedro, this is a long-winded and elaborate thank-you.

I was eleven, visiting my grandparents in L.A. over the Christmas break. My mom pulled me into a vintage store and I came out, to my surprise—and my delight—sporting an old Zoot suit. It fit me perfectly—or at least well enough. It was a heavy grey wool; double-breasted; massively-padded shoulders; lapels that lay over my chest like two crossed scimitars—the sharp, severe lines of a suit from the 1940s, exaggerated to the extreme to match the the extreme swagger of the natty toughs who wore them and for which they were named.

It had never occurred to me that a suit could be so cool—that a suit could be cool at all. And could make me cool by wearing it. I threw it over a dayglo t-shirt, with canvas sneakers and the Indiana Jones fedora I had picked up on a trip to Universal Studios.

It takes cajones to wear an outfit like that. Mine still hadn’t fully developed and yet everyday for the remaining week I was in L.A., I rocked that suit—commanded it the way only a kid can. The way you wear superhero costumes in public without shame. Because it is an extension of your persona—of the future, better you, the you you fully intend on living up to. In Venice Beach, California-surfer-dudes gave me hang-loose signs. Women in short-shorts smiled at me, paid me compliments. I stood out. I looked good. A little eccentric, sure. But, still.

I liked how it made me feel about myself. I liked this new me.

Then we flew back home to the small-city suburbs. To winter. To junior high. To the school yard and the pack in which standing out is dangerous unless it’s because you sit precariously at the very top. I can’t remember if I actually wore the suit to school and got called a fag for doing it and so hung it up for good, or whether I was just so certain that that’s what would happen that I never actually wore it. Probably the latter. Wearing something different—especially that different—was, at the time, like painting yourself in swine’s blood and setting off into the jungle. It was a way of ensuring you were preyed upon. It was certain social death.

And so that badass suit of mine hung in my closet, no longer an object of adoration but something that elicited a deep unease. It was like a cursed relic. I feared it because of what it could do to me. More than that, I distrusted the initial instinct that led me to take on something that would make me so socially vulnerable. And so it eventually became an object of contempt—of self-contempt. On object on which to focus a growing distrust of my own desire for originality and creative self-expression.

I did what kids do at that age: I adopted The Uniform: rugby pants and untucked collared shirts; Reeboks; Levis and t-shirts; Polo Ralph Lauren and Ocean Pacific. And because my parents couldn’t—or wouldn’t—buy me the brand names, I was relegated to the knock-offs. The most generic version of the generic uniform.

The Zoot suit remained on a hanger until I outgrew it, forgot about it and eventually tossed it out. And in my sartorial anonymity, I found safety.

* * *

In my early thirties, I moved to New Delhi for work—a six month assignment. I had been telling myself for a few years that I wanted to dress better. Better to me meant bespoke suits. So, I found a tailor in Connaught Circle who made them for about 150 bucks a pop. I knew nothing about suits really, bespoke or otherwise. I had one to my name, a nice off-the-rack Italian suit. Flat grey worsted wool. Fully canvased. Well constructed. Nicely altered. It was a business suit. I bought it so I looked respectable interviewing government officials. I wore it once to the Canadian Consulate for a dinner. I liked the way I looked in it—structured, composed but still pretty much myself—and so I had it reproduced in navy, black, navy-pinstripe and khaki. They were all flops. When I put them on, I looked like I worked in a rental car office. They were like bad photocopies of the original. I looked supremely square in them—suits that made me look like A Suit. I thought maybe some fun ties and flashy shirts would make me look more like what I was aiming for—casual, refined, comfortable in my own skin. They didn’t. They just made me look like a tackier version of the Rental Car Kid.

I brought those suits back to Canada where they have, for the most part, hung unused in my closet, just like that old Zoot suit.

* * *

And yet it was an itch that wouldn’t go away entirely, this sartorial ambition of mine. I was turning forty and, still, I’d occasionally think about tailored suits. But I had done that already and it hadn’t worked out. Plus, by now I knew myself well enough to know that I probably wasn’t going to wear suits day-to-day, no matter how casual or well-fitted they were. I was stuck between wanting to dress well and having no idea what that actually entailed for myself.

And so I crossed the forty-yard line of my life still in The Uniform—one that had evolved a bit since the school yard but, still, one that was more or less the same: jeans and T-shirts; sweaters and cargos; sneakers and Doc Martins. It was a good enough look I suppose, rugged, masculine. But as I aged, and became less rugged myself, it started to slip into weekend-dad territory. Jeans and t-shirts look great when you’re 25 and in prime shape. They sort of look like Jerry Seinfeld, circa-1998 as you move into mid-life.

And then you walked on the scene, Pedro—dressed like a boss, I’ll add.

(For those reading this, I was fortunate to work with Pedro—he was one of my directors for the audio version of a book I had written. We spent a lot of time during our breaks discussing clothes—by which I mean I pestered him with basic questions about how to dress.)

At this point I had just started rummaging through vintage shops, looking for stuff that was didn’t make me look like a rental car guy, a Bay Street Bro or a vintage cosplay freak. I had found a couple jackets that fit me but that was about it. I wasn’t having much luck otherwise.

Mostly, I felt like if I continued with this third sartorial dalliance of mine, I’d end up dressing like some guy other than myself. I’d end up committing a lot money to clothes that would end up on hangers. And, to be honest, when I first started talking to you about clothes, Pedro, I sort of expected you to push me in that direction. I expected you (unfairly—this was judgement born of insecurity and naivety) to come at me with a born-again’s fervour, to try to re-maketh this man in your image.

Don’t get me wrong, my friend. I really dig your style—but I dig it on you. After all, it’s your style.

What I’m thanking you for, in my round-about way, is helping me figure out my style. It’s been fun. And hard, like writing or any other form of creative expression.

The hardest part for me has been that a lot of the things that work for other sartorially-inclined guys—things that I appreciate on other men—just don’t do it for me. I’m not much of a tie guy, let alone cravats. Don’t even get me started on bow ties. I have trouble pulling off both the Ivy League look and the English country look—two major go-tos in men’s style—primarily because I tend to identify more with my family’s Western American roots. My dad comes from a ranching family; my mom from a family of California counterculture beatniks. I’m awfully fond of work wear. Denim is literally part of my family’s fabric. Emulating east-coast prep or landed gentry feels like a game of dress-up that feels both unnatural to me as well as vaguely treasonous. And, to complicate things, despite marrying into an Italian-Canadian family, I’m too big and blockish for the elegant lines of a lot of Italian clothing—or at least I feel that way much of the time. I just couldn’t see what options there were for me.

But you could, Pedro.

I followed your advice: to stick with what I like, but to get better versions—tailor-made when I can; to choose fabric I felt comfortable with—denims, cotton twills; to go understated and stick with muted colours; to go for simple, well-made trousers and shirts. I appreciate the hours you took, talking with me about style basics, the websites you introduced me to, places where buddying clothes nerds go to become legit clothes nerds. I devoured the copy of Bruce Boyer’s True Style you gave me.

You’ve given me a whole set of tools I’m learning how to use—and learning how to enjoy using. I’ve got a few shirts now. A few pair of trousers. Some good shoes. A good suit and a few jackets. Nothing extraordinarily expensive. Nothing extraordinarily flashy. Stuff I feel good in—feel myself in. Stuff my wife and friends and family like. Hell, stuff even my mailman has given me props for.

Mostly, Pedro, I want to thank you for helping me retake something I discarded back in the schoolyard—the sense that it was OK to be me, to dress like myself. To stand out a bit, be original.

My eleven-year old self appreciates it.

With all my gratitude,
Daemon