From the NBA Draft to Cannes, the flashy coloured suit is everywhere

Athletes, movie stars and the occasional flamboyant businessman are all gravitating toward tailoring that speaks louder than your standard navy or grey.

US director and Jury President of the 74th Cannes Film Festival Spike Lee delivers a speech. Picture: AFP

In March 2020, as Americans woke up to the reality of Covid-19’s spread, I wrote a cringingly ill-timed story about coloured suiting for men.

“Tailoring in strong colours once reserved for graphic T-shirts makes a full-throated declaration that this is not your father’s grey flannel suit,” I wrote, noting that readers could buy a tomato-red suit from Berluti or a lime-green one by Jacquemus.

In my defence, few of us knew how catastrophic the pandemic would be when I pitched the story but, by the time it was published on March 18, many readers were isolating at home in sweats. The article is now a relic of an unsteady moment. At the last minute, my editors and I attempted to make it relevant with the headline: “Skype Brilliantly in These Optimistically Hued Suits.” This was before Zoom would supplant Skype as Americans’ go-to for lockdown video-calls.

Suffice to say, most of us did not log onto our 2020 video meetings in resplendently colourful suits. Formal-leaning fashion trends took a back seat to comforting sweats and routine Zoom shirts as we slogged through WFH routines. But as something resembling normal life has resumed for some — and even as the Delta variant of the virus is reversing positive trends in portions of the country — vivid suits are re-entering the public eye, an expression of over a year’s worth of pent-up desire to dress more sophisticatedly and frivolously. “We already knew [coloured suits] were coming pre-pandemic [and], of course, the pandemic definitely put a pause on that … That pause button has now been hit back to play,” said Michael Fisher, vice-president of menswear at Fashion Snoops, a New York-based trend-forecasting company. “Right now,” he said, “colour is the best way for everyone to shake things up.”

For those who will never grace the cover of a fashion magazine, a jolting suit shakes off the style paralysis of the past 16 months. Aleks Musika, a tailor in New York, said his corporate clients are open to “something different, something louder”, after a “gloomy” year. Mr Musika noted that each time cases dropped and the world seemed to be crawling back to “normal”, he’d see a surge in clients coming in for pick-me-up suits in sprightly colours. For them, it’s not just a suit, it’s a wearable mood enhancer.

Consider as well the kaleidoscopic suits celebrities have worn in the past month or so. In early July, Colman Domingo took to the red carpet at the premiere of Zola in a shiny Big Bird-yellow Dolce & Gabbana suit. At the Cannes Film Festival, The Crown star Josh O’Connor wore a flamingo-pink, double-breasted suit by Loewe, though he was one-upped by jury president Spike Lee, who not only wore a blaring pink Louis Vuitton suit (with matching sunglasses) but also a rainbow-coloured, cloud-printed suit to close the festival. At last week’s NBA Draft, fresh-faced first-round picks Jonathan Kuminga, Evan Mobley and Alperen Sengun pulled out suits in pumpkin, teal and emerald, respectively.

For celebrities and athletes, attracting press attention is certainly one motivation for going beyond navy or grey. By wearing a primary-coloured suit, they’re creating a mini media moment for themselves. Last week, those budding NBA stars were covered not just on ESPN, but – thanks to their prismatic tailoring – on GQ’s website, too. Mr Lee’s experimental suits earned him glowing notices on media outlets from Vogue to Vulture to GQ, which proclaimed “Spike Lee’s All-Vuitton Cannes Wardrobe Set a New Standard for Exuberance”. The pandemic has perhaps supercharged these stars’ eagerness to make a splash. In recent months, both Usher and actor Regé-Jean Page have conspicuously worn shapely pink suits by Dzojchen, a menswear brand based in Singapore and New York and owned by Chelsea Scott-Blackhall.

Ms Scott-Blackhall noted that with events on pause throughout last year, breakout style moments that generated media coverage were extremely limited. As the stars re-emerge, they’re clearly looking to make up for lost time.

Last month, my Instagram feed lit up with photos of the 94-year-old painter Alex Katz wearing a pine-green Bottega Veneta suit on the cover of L’Uomo Vogue magazine. Stella Greenspan, the New York stylist behind Mr Katz’s look, said she chose this sumptuous green number because it made her think of his vibrant canvases. The image, by photographer Craig McDean, really sucks you in, in part because the jolly green suit contrasts with Mr Katz’s stern facial expression. He might not have been smiling, but seeing the nonagenarian painter in this unexpected suit certainly made me grin.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL