It’s gratifying to wear an outfit made up of two matching pieces. It is easy to step into a bottom half and then a top half that share colour and fabric or slip a coat over a dress. It is much easier to complete a Rubik’s cube. It’s comforting that repetition is always comforting. A bowl of pasta, every fork the same as the last, is calming and consoling after a long day; an episode of Friends that you have seen 20 times before offers a very specific kind of dopamine hit.
The reason pyjamas match is because of this. It’s why people who didn’t think they were tracksuits started clicking on add-to-baskets on coloured joggers with matching hoodies. The tracksuit has left a fashion legacy beyond a reliance on elastic waists. It has made us like matchy-matchy a lot.
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At festivals, a vibrant short-sleeve shirt and matching shorts was the menswear look of choice for youthful peacocks
The tailored suit was a symbol of tyranny and the crush of the commute. Atailored suit was a look to take note of, but it was not really a look to love. The clock-in-clock-out regime of office life has loosened its iron grip on many and changed how we feel about wearing suits.
The off-duty suits in party colors were popular this summer. The extra-chilled version of the suit became very popular. Even at the beach, the beach pyjama (draw string shorts plus a shirt worn open) was the chicest bikini cover-up of the summer. Uptight doesn’t mean matchy- matchy anymore. It doesn’t mean lining up your pinstripes or neurotically coordinating your court shoes with your clutch bag, it means pyjamas and tracksuits.
The linen suit is pretty chill. Brad Pitt was on the press tour for Bullet Train wearing a series of juicy colored linen suits. Pitt is always enjoyable to look at, but there was something cheering about him in lightly crumpled pastel linen, looking as if he might be about to leave the red carpet and go to a bar with a beer. Maybe for a game of cards or cigarettes.
Pitt is the only summer style icon that can be found in a linen suit. It would be the color of a very good chardonnay. For walking on the beach, the trousers would be rolled and the jacket soft. A straw hat is possible.
You don’t have to wear pinstripes, shoulder pads, a tie or a shirt to make a slouchy suit look like a look. Whether it is a fresh Nike tracksuit or a matching two-piece is up to you. A suit is always power dressing, with pinstripes or a swoosh, and that’s why the tracksuit has such status in the street. Power dressing is the new comfort dressing Half the effort needs to be doubled. It’s a good thing that suits me.