In Defence of the Nineties: The Oversized Suit
Setting the record straight on the subject of ’90s style
Words by Will Halbert
The ’90s sure get a hard time of it, don’t they? It makes sense I suppose. As a decade bookended by the overwrought pomp and pyrotechnics of the 80s and the thrift-inspired, hipster-laden nihilism of the 00s, the ’90s offer little more than either a poor follow-up or a terrible ice-breaker depending on which side of the demographic cohort you sit. To put it bluntly, the ’90s had the rotten luck of being born in the wrong decade.
But it wasn’t all bad, and over the next few weeks – with an authority that’s not at all in any way skewered or otherwise biased by any unapologetic nostalgia whatsoever – I’m going to tell you why.
The suit is as good a place to start as any in this noblest of endeavours. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the suit double down on its sartorial severity; we’ve watched experts and amateurs alike run amok with arbitrary rules and overstated myths on the dos and don’ts of wearing the damn thing. So much so that suiting up runs the risk of losing its all-important element of fun.
Not so with the ’90s suit, the boxy brazenness of which is entirely undeterred by lofty questions of fit, fabric and well, stylistic sensibility. Just google what a suit looked like back then. Bask in the glory of its unstructured and oversized pattern. Feast on the unnecessary abundance of its shoulders, the terrifying dominance of its lapels. Count – if you can – the breaks in that seemingly eternal inseam and climb – if you dare – the majestic heights of that front rise.
There are those who will hear mention of the ’90s suit and immediately call on images of everyone’s favourite statistical analyst, Chandler Bing and they’d be entirely within their rights to do so. But if you want my two cents (and what is this whole exercise if not some 400 words’ worth of my two cents), nobody wore the ’90s suit with more stone-cold style conviction than the ’90s action film villain.
Just look at Norman Stansfield of Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional (1995), by way of example. The crooked cop’s khaki suit is boxy, baggy, and boasts more trouser breaks than you can shake a subpoena at. There’s not a tie in sight nor a taper in mind. Sure, the Stansfield ensemble is more likely to be the result of narcotic-fueled nonchalance than any knowing, sartorial subversion, but it sure is fun all the same.
The Stansfield school of villainous suiting offers us an easy, breezy little exercise in lightening up a little. It espouses a sense of laid-back ease that tailors and high boutique off-the-railers alike have started coming around to. If nothing else, the Stansfield suit stands in lovely, subversive juxtaposition to the sharply tailored, double-breasted four-on-two of Die Hard’s Hans Gruber; a far less fun suit that we can’t actually talk about anyway because Die Hard was made in 1988 and that would be cheating.
