Selecting a suit for business is… a serious business. But it can also be a labor of love. To take some of the guesswork out of commissioning your next 9 to 5 rig we’ve put together a handy guide to business suits below.

Style

In today’s variated work landscape, there is no “one-size-fits all” template for business suits. A creative industry may be more amenable to casual details such as patch pockets, while the traditionally conservative fields of banking, finance and law call for the sobriety of a flapped pocket. 

While our tailors will happily engage with you to discover the right details for your workplace, we also prescribe what’s become the house style of Cad & The Dandy: a one-button jacket with a fitted waist and a soft shoulder. We like to think of it as the traditional English cut, softened for modern times, and it will never look out of place in a boardroom, a courtroom, or indeed, a bar room. 

If you’d like to have a more formal look, you can always add a waistcoat to turn your commission into a three-piece-suit. The great part about three-pieces is that they can also be worn sans-vest, transitioning back to a two-piece if the circumstances are less buttoned-up, or the climate balmier. 

Durability

You will (hopefully) not be welding pipes or laying down Tube tracks in your business suit, but the garment does need to function as workwear. To that end, you’ll want to make sure that it has both physical and aesthetic durability. 

Heavier fabrics tend to be harder wearing, both in the sense of not wearing out and not losing their shape over time (a denser weave is also less likely to wrinkle). And if a part of the suit were to wear out—an eventual consequence of long-haul flights, dashes through Airport security and the mounting and dismounting of cabs—it’ll most likely be the trousers. 

Luckily, there’s an easy insurance policy to the problem of a blown-out crotch or frayed knee. Consider having an extra pair of trousers made with your commission, which will significantly extend the suit’s lifetime. 

Fabrics

Leave the spongey tweeds to weekends in the country, and the crisp linens to holidays in Majorca. When it comes to business attire, you’d best stick to worsted plain weaves in dark, solid colours or subtle patterns such as a pinstripe, Birdseye or nailhead. 

There are a few favorite fabric books worth calling out in detail. Dugdale’s Royal Classic Vantage manages the feat of being both lighter in weight yet substantial in drape and feel. Fresco by Huddersfield Fine Worsted has become an industry standard, thanks to the natural wrinkle-resistance of its high-twist woolen fibers. Meanwhile, Loro Piana’s Winter Australis is a book of Super 150s that are at once sleek and substantial, while the Oxbridge Flannel book by Standeven supplies a texture-rich Super 120s wool still comfortably weighted for business travel.