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Every September it happens. The city comes back from the lake, the office fills up again, and a man appears at our fitting mirror with a question he has clearly been sitting on all summer: how many suits does a man need, really? He half expects a sales pitch. After decades of asking Montreal businessmen to raise their arms while we chalk a seam, we can give him the honest answer instead.
The honest number is three
Three. Fewer than you feared, and fewer than a store that sells suits should probably admit. But the number isn't about your wardrobe — it's about wool. A suit worn two days running never recovers. Worsted cloth holds moisture and the shape of your day, and it needs a full day on the hanger, in open air, to shed both. Wear one suit constantly and you'll replace it in two years, shiny at the elbows and seat. Rotate three and each of them can serve you for a decade. The math has never been complicated; it's just rarely said out loud by the people selling the suits.
Three also happens to be the number a working week actually demands. Two suit days, a jacket-and-trouser day, and most men are covered. If you're in a suit five days a week — some of our lawyers still are — read on, because your number is different.
How many suits does a man need for the office? Start with charcoal
Received wisdom says navy first. We'll offer a minority opinion, formed over many years on this side of the tape measure: for a Montreal businessman, charcoal works harder. It sits more naturally under our grey winter light, it dresses up for a funeral and down for a Tuesday, and it doesn't fight the brown shoes half our clients now prefer. Something like Jack Victor's charcoal semi-solid Dean — cut a short drive from our store, in a wool with enough stretch to survive a day of meetings — is the single most useful garment we sell.
The second suit is where blue belongs, and here we'd push you toward texture rather than another flat worsted. An unconstructed blue wool-and-cashmere — soft in the shoulder, forgiving across the back — earns its keep at client dinners where a navy sack suit would read like a uniform. The third: mid-grey, plain or nearly so. Browse our suit collection and you'll notice these three colours account for most of what we buy each season. That is not a coincidence. It's the buy sheet of ninety years of alterations tickets telling us what men actually wear.
The fourth suit you don't need
At least once a month a client with three good suits asks us for a fourth that is, functionally, a copy of his first. We talk him out of it. Once the rotation exists, the same money does far more work elsewhere: two or three proper dress shirts from ETON or Stenströms will change how every one of your suits looks, because the collar is what people see across a table. A second pair of good shoes extends the life of the first. A fourth charcoal suit changes nothing except our till, and we'd rather keep your trust than make the sale.
The exception is pattern. If your three solids are earning their keep and your calendar has room for it — a windowpane, a subtle plaid — a fourth suit with some personality is a pleasure rather than a redundancy. But it's dessert, not dinner.
When three becomes five
Some men genuinely need more. If you're in court daily, if your office never relaxed its dress code, if you travel weekly and a suit lives in your carry-on, five is your floor — the rotation logic simply scales. And if you're hard to fit off the rack, athletic through the shoulders or long in the arm, this is where made-to-measure stops being an indulgence and becomes the economical choice, because an ill-fitting suit is expensive at any price. Book a fitting and we'll measure you properly before you commit to anything.
Come see us on Decarie Boulevard, and bring the suit you already own — the honest starting point is knowing what you have. We've talked as many men out of suits as into them over the years. We suspect that's why they keep coming back.
