Despite appearances to the contrary, I'm not much of a suit person.

For large parts of the working year - in fact most days that end in a "y" - the job simply doesn't require it.

Like most men, however, I quite like the idea of the suit. It's hard not to in the current fashion climate, when even Topshop is selling its version of the Savile Row whistle and everyone from superstar DJs to superstar footballers is photographed wearing them at this or that superstar-studded event.

Turn on the telly, meanwhile, and it won't be long before you find a BBC Four documentary eulogising the garment. Open a magazine and you can read about its importance as a "classic piece" that every man should have in black, blue and grey. Turn to your DVD boxsets for relief and there's Don Draper in seasons one to five of Mad Men, all trouser creases and pocket squares.

But amid all this fetishisation of the two-piece (or three piece if you're a waistcoat man), we tend to forget one important fact: the suit is esssentially businesswear and its natural environment is not the roped-off VIP area of some club where the Cristal costs £600 a bottle, but the break-out area of some dreary open-plan office where the vending machine's permanently out of KitKats. You know the kind of place I mean because it's probably where you work.

It's human nature, I think, to wear clothes which are appropriate to your surroundings. So if you work in a dull, shapeless, brown office block, it's perfectly reasonable to cut your cloth accordingly. In fact it would be quite unreasonable to wear a suit like the one actor Eddie Redmayne wore to pick up his GQ Man of the Year award recently - a Gucci number in the sort of check pattern the missus would describe as "shouty". Sure it's nice, but not for the office.

Perversely, the stuff known by menswear designers as "workwear" is equally useless for the office. It's mostly an expensive facsimile of the utilitarian jackets, trousers and overalls worn by British railway workers and French lorry drivers in the forties and fifties. Stick "worker jacket" into Google and among the top hits will be versions by Margaret Howell (£275) and Barbour (£229). Add a flat cap and a fisherman's sweater and you have the full "workwear" look, but I ask you: for what "work" is that the appropriate "wear"? I can think of Downton Abbey extra and web designer, but after that I'm stumped.

So there are suits and there are suits, it seems. And like it or not, real workwear for most men is a thing with a saggy seat and shiny elbows that was bought in M&S the year Gareth Bale was born. Checks? Not in our dreary open-plan office. Not in a day ending in a "y".