Growing up in London during the 2000s, I was always immersed in a world of suits. They adorned businessmen rushing through the financial district. You could spot them on fathers in Hyde Park, kicking footballs in the evening light. Even school, a cheap grey suit was our required uniform. Traditionally, the suit has functioned as a costume of seriousness, signaling power and performance—traits I was expected to embrace to become a "man". Yet, until recently, people my age appeared to wear them less and less, and they had all but vanished from my mind.
Subsequently came the incoming New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani. He was sworn in at a private ceremony wearing a subdued black overcoat, crisp white shirt, and a distinctive silk tie. Riding high by an innovative campaign, he captivated the public's imagination like no other recent contender for city hall. But whether he was cheering in a music venue or attending a film premiere, one thing was mostly unchanged: he was almost always in a suit. Loosely tailored, modern with soft shoulders, yet traditional, his is a quintessentially professional millennial suit—well, as common as it can be for a cohort that seldom chooses to wear one.
"The suit is in this weird place," notes style commentator Derek Guy. "It's been dying a gradual fade since the end of the second world war," with the significant drop coming in the 1990s alongside "the rise of business casual."
"It's basically only worn in the most formal settings: marriages, memorials, to some extent, legal proceedings," Guy explains. "It is like the traditional Japanese robe in Japan," in that it "essentially represents a tradition that has long retreated from daily life." Many politicians "wear a suit to say: 'I am a politician, you can trust me. You should support me. I have authority.'" Although the suit has historically conveyed this, today it performs authority in the hope of winning public confidence. As Guy elaborates: "Since we're also living in a liberal democracy, politicians want to seem approachable, because they're trying to get your votes." To a large extent, a suit is just a subtle form of performance, in that it enacts manliness, authority and even proximity to power.
This analysis stayed with me. On the rare occasions I need a suit—for a wedding or black-tie event—I retrieve the one I bought from a Japanese retailer several years ago. When I first selected it, it made me feel refined and expensive, but its slim cut now feels passé. I suspect this feeling will be only too recognizable for numerous people in the diaspora whose parents originate in somewhere else, especially global south countries.
It's no surprise, the everyday suit has fallen out of fashion. Like a pair of jeans, a suit's silhouette goes through cycles; a specific cut can thus characterize an era—and feel rapidly outdated. Take now: looser-fitting suits, echoing Richard Gere's Armani in *American Gigolo*, might be trendy, but given the cost, it can feel like a significant investment for something likely to fall out of fashion within five years. But the appeal, at least in some quarters, endures: in the past year, major retailers report suit sales increasing more than 20% as customers "shift from the suit being daily attire towards an desire to invest in something special."
Mamdani's preferred suit is from a contemporary brand, a European label that retails in a mid-market price bracket. "He is precisely a reflection of his upbringing," says Guy. "In his thirties, he's not poor but not extremely wealthy." To that end, his moderately-priced suit will resonate with the demographic most inclined to support him: people in their 30s and 40s, college graduates earning professional incomes, often discontented by the expense of housing. It's exactly the kind of suit they might wear themselves. Affordable but not extravagant, Mamdani's suits arguably align with his proposed policies—such as a capping rents, constructing affordable homes, and fare-free public buses.
"It's impossible to imagine Donald Trump wearing this brand; he's a luxury Italian suit person," says Guy. "As an immensely wealthy and grew up in that New York real-estate world. A power suit fits seamlessly with that elite, just as more accessible brands fit naturally with Mamdani's constituency."
The legacy of suits in politics is long and storied: from a former president's "controversial" beige attire to other world leaders and their notably polished, custom-fit appearance. Like a certain UK leader learned, the suit doesn't just clothe the politician; it has the power to define them.
Perhaps the point is what one scholar refers to the "enactment of ordinariness", summoning the suit's long career as a standard attire of political power. Mamdani's particular choice leverages a studied modesty, neither shabby nor showy—"conforming to norms" in an inconspicuous suit—to help him appeal to as many voters as possible. However, experts think Mamdani would be cognizant of the suit's military and colonial legacy: "The suit isn't apolitical; historians have long noted that its contemporary origins lie in military or colonial administration." It is also seen as a form of protective armor: "I think if you're from a minority background, you might not get taken as seriously in these traditional institutions." The suit becomes a way of signaling legitimacy, perhaps especially to those who might doubt it.
This kind of sartorial "changing styles" is hardly a new phenomenon. Even iconic figures previously wore formal Western attire during their early years. These days, other world leaders have started exchanging their typical fatigues for a black suit, albeit one without the tie.
"Throughout the fabric of Mamdani's public persona, the tension between belonging and otherness is visible."
The attire Mamdani selects is highly significant. "Being the son of immigrants of South Asian heritage and a democratic socialist, he is under scrutiny to meet what many American voters expect as a marker of leadership," says one expert, while at the same time needing to walk a tightrope by "not looking like an elitist betraying his distinctive roots and values."
Yet there is an sharp awareness of the double standards applied to suit-wearers and what is read into it. "That may come in part from Mamdani being a millennial, skilled to adopt different personas to fit the occasion, but it may also be part of his multicultural background, where code-switching between cultures, traditions and clothing styles is typical," it is said. "Some individuals can remain unremarked," but when others "attempt to gain the authority that suits represent," they must carefully negotiate the expectations associated with them.
Throughout the presentation of Mamdani's official image, the tension between somewhere and nowhere, inclusion and exclusion, is visible. I know well the awkwardness of trying to fit into something not built for me, be it an cultural expectation, the society I was born into, or even a suit. What Mamdani's sartorial choices make clear, however, is that in politics, image is not without meaning.
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