The two- and three-piece suit as we know it is facing extinction as changes in workplace requirements usher in a new way of dressing.

Says who?

Says high street retailer Marks and Spencer, who know a thing or two about suits. They have sold them for generations to those men whose job requires one, or who simply don’t feel properly dressed in anything other than a whistle and flute.

What’s different now?

Among the many social and economic changes the pandemic has wrought is an increase in home working. That means a commensurate decrease in the number of suited and booted chaps shlepping into a city centre office somewhere. Why squeeze into a slightly-too-tight suit for eight hours in an over-heated building when you can do the same job at home wearing neon yellow joggers and a Rick and Morty t-shirt? With that in mind – well, probably not that exactly – Marks and Spencer have reduced the number of stores at which you can buy a suit. To be precise, only 110 of its 254 clothing stores currently offer the service. There is a rationale behind the move: in-store sales of formal wear at the retailer fell 72% in the year to April, while online sales dropped 15%. Over the same period, online sales of casualwear rose 61%. You don’t need to be a fashion genius to see which way the sartorial wind is blowing.

So is it RIP for the suit?

Yes, no and sort of. While suit sales have fallen drastically over the last 18 months, they were already on the slide. According to new research from market analysts Kantar, Britons bought five million suits annually a decade ago but that number had fallen to 4.3 million by 2016. Over the past year, however, only two million suits were sold. However the suit lives on in a sense because what is replacing it for those who do need to get back to the office is something called ‘the broken suit’.

The broken suit?

Yes. It’s a suit that isn’t quite a suit because it’s actually a smart shirt and pair of smart chinos. In other words there is still a degree of formal attire associated with office jobs, it’s just not as formal as it once was. “Covid hit fast forward on the trend to more casual dressing that was already in train,” says Marks and Spencer menswear director West Taylor, “so our smart-wear is now more focused on smart separates – easy to wear, stylish smart clothing that can be worn in lots of different ways.”