Dress Like You’re Selling Something

As a writer, I like to find words for things. String of words that build strangely compelling phrases. Lone words that encapsulate. Even technical terms bring delight—how satisfying it is to distinguish electrocution from electrification, to know an aviary from an apiary!

Add to this my love for good clothing, deftly worn, and it’s only natural that I would seek words to describe raiment. Knowing a bomber from a blouson or a gusset from an aglet might not be a mark of style, but it is a mark of my favorite kind of pedantry.

Now, there’s a garment that’s having its moment in the style limelight right now, and, to my knowledge, no one has given it a decent name. So here I am, ready to give it a catchier name and to tell you a little about it.

Now, let me tell you about the peddler suit.

A peddler, as you may know, is an old-timey traveling salesman. Peddlers or their equivalents have existed for centuries and across cultures, and they obviously don’t have a single universal way of dressing, but I think peddler suit is a good name for this suit for two reasons.

First, peddler is an intensely fun word to say, and it doesn’t come up enough in my day-to-day conversations.

Second, you can spot lots of 20^th Century peddlers (in Europe and the US at least) who did wear the exact kind of suit I have in mind.

See, back in olden times, all the menfolk wore suits. It wasn’t a dress-up thing. So if you were doing some sort of practical labor, waiting tables or mending fences or peddling wares, you just wore a different sort of suit than the people at desks or cocktail bars.

People usually call this a work suit, which, besides lacking evocative power, has confusingly synonymy with “business suit.” And it’s the polar opposite of a business suit.

Often made from cheaper, rugged cotton rather than from more expensive wool, the peddler suit has a boxier shape and typically forgoes internal structure—while a classic business suit is formed around a shaped fabric scaffolding on the inside, peddler suits often omit this sartorial endoskeleton. Sometimes, not always, the peddler suit is cut shorter for ease of movement. And, as a practical garment, it tends to have lots of pockets.

That’s what a peddler suit is, taxonomically speaking. But what is it in practice? Let’s see some examples. While you can find lovely ones on the vintage market, I’m not qualified to give you the lay of the land there. I can, however, be your guide through the peddler suits (and many more peddler jackets that don’t have matching pants) of today. I particularly like the look of the jacket from LEJ and the suits from Buck Mason, Aaron Levine, and 3sixteen. You can also find options at RRL, The Anthology, James Coward, Graphpaper (a more fashion-y take), Gitman Bros. Carrier Company, Eighteen East, and so, so many from Drake’s.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course. The peddler suit is having a moment at the moment. Why shouldn’t it? It has a lot of advantages.

First, it’s easier to make an affordable one. It’s because of that structure that hides inside more formal suits. Lower-end suits usually create this internal structure by gluing the inside face of the suit fabric to a strip of material inside of it, but this can make the suit sag sadly as the glue gives out over time. Higher-end suits that use more traditional methods tend to be expensive. The peddler suit—often without internal structure—is a happy manufacturing middle ground. You don’t have the expense of traditional methods or the shoddiness of glue. (Though this isn’t to say that you can’t make peddler suits at a level of craft that warrants a higher price!)

Second, the peddler suit strikes an important balance between formal and casual. Originally, of course, the peddler suit was strictly a workwear garment. But as all our ways of dressing have drifted toward the casual end, the mere act of wearing a suit—or even just a tailored jacket—reads as an intentional attempt at some sort of formality or elegance. The danger is that you run the risk of looking affected. But the peddler suit can help with this! While it’s cut like a suit—granting some of that aura of elegance—it continues to give visual indications of casualness through its rugged materials, boxy fit, shorter length, and workwear iconography. It doesn’t try too hard. You can have your cape and eat it too.

Finally, the peddler almost always achieves the mystical distinction of being a “three-way suit.” For those who aren’t initiated, a three-way suit is one you can wear three ways: just the pants, just the jacket, or both together as a suit. Many, many suits are not so flexible. If you pick a suit jacket at random of the department store rack in the mens section and try to wear it without the pants, it looks like you must have made a mistake. Trousers are usually a little more forgiving—but there are certainly pairs that make it look like you left your jacket in the other room. All that to say, most suits are not three-way suits. But a three-way suit is a wonderful thing; it gives you total flexibility. And most peddler suits—thanks once again to their casual associations—work as three-way suits.

For all of these reasons, the peddler is a suit well-suited for work or play. It is rugged enough to blend in with polos and dress shirts in a business casual office. At the cocktail bar, its balance of polished and casual feels fun. It isn’t avant garde, luxurious, or formal, but it will get you through pretty much all the rest of your sartorial moods.

Especially the ones that involve selling onions door-to-door.