Bielefeld, Germany (dpa) – “Suits are making a comeback!” There’s a report along these lines in every lifestyle journal, celebrating the revival of female interest in the classic two-piece for the current autumn/winter seasons.
The current catchphrase is “new elegance”, consigning the 1990s’ preoccupation with purism and sportiness to the history books. Suits have taken centre stage in this new thinking.
This latest trend is aimed at young women, prosperous thanks to their own hard work and keen to show off their success. The Duesseldorf fashion publication “Textil Mitteilungen” has christened this rebirth of tailoring “Nasdaq”, after the U.S. technology shares index. And the people wearing it are the “new economy generation”, the yuppies of the new millennium.
“Young women who have their sights set on their careers will wear suits, this I know for sure”, says Elke Giese, head designer at the German Fashion Institute in Munich. “A suit’s thoroughness and unity proclaim competence and the ability to work hard, and a suit positively radiates security and confidence.”
Right now, successful twentysomethings are discovering suits for themselves, introducing this sober, more controlled way of dressing into their wardrobes for the first time. Until now it was a matter of “anything goes”, with garments of all kinds allowed.
Femininity was often trapped in a unisex textile shell. Now the renaissance in elegance and femininity has allotted a starring role to completely different items of clothing: skirts, blouses and suits are the stars of the show.
“Today, women know how easy it is to be a woman, and they use this to their advantage in their careers as well.” Sibylla Jahr, a fashion consultant for, among others, the German magazine Maxi, has nominated the suit as the season’s must-have.
“Being a woman means admitting you have feelings. They used to think that they had to fit in and play by the rules of a man’s world. Now women have learned that it’s a lot easier and more honest to be themselves.”
So much for the professionals’ opinions. But how do people perceive the suit in the real world of business? When Vanessa Hopmann goes to work for management consultants Roland Berger & Partner in Munich, she normally wears a skirt suit along with 70 per cent of her female colleagues. The rest of the women wear trouser suits.
Hopmann chooses between skirts and trousers according to the situation she will be working in, explaining that when visiting clients, “you can score plus points with men when you’re in a skirt, but women can just as easily look down their nose at you for it.”
Anyone working at R.Y.S.A., a young Internet company in Switzerland, can dress as they please so long as it does not look too casual. According to Claudia Meythaler, art designer in the firm’s Berlin branch, “the people in our line of work are individualists, they don’t allow themselves to be put in a uniform.”
Meythaler herself sports simple basic elements, combined with Japanese T-shirts or off-the-wall plastic jackets from the 1970s, which she buys in secondhand shops.
The new technology sector has also introduced the notion of the “casual Friday”. From the mid-1980s onwards, America’s young computer elite tended to dress in a more unconventional style. Gradually, even the bosses in more conservative companies made sartorial concessions.
They decided to permit employees to dress casually for work on Fridays. Elke Giese plays down this innovation as one of offering too much freedom.
“This is where the problem began for most people. Until then, they were always sure what they should wear, but suddenly they’re all different and you can tell who has taste and who hasn’t,” she said, adding that psychologists have already warned about the stress “casual Fridays” can cause.
Bielefeld-based image, colour and fashion consultant Sabine Rogg, on the other hand, still thinks it is best to take a step back from all this style dictatorship and take personality into account.
“Women should first and foremost find out what their best colours and styles are and which ones most suit the shape of their face and of their body. A woman can sometimes look very odd in a skirt but incredible in a trouser suit.”
