Suitably sartorial — the new appeal of a plain old suit

12 Dec 2022

The faux stylishness of Markus Jooste was an indication of someone slightly too self-conscious and bordering on vain. And that could, and in retrospect should, have been a red flag when it came to his stewardship of a very large company.

There is a quip doing the rounds which goes something like this: “When an Afrikaner starts wearing dark shirts in the middle of the day, we should know there is bound to be trouble brewing.” (Made, of course, from someone from within the Afrikaans community.) The quote refers to former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste, who had a penchant for deep burgundy shirts, set off against dark tweed jackets.

The quip is retrospective of course, and I know you should never judge a book by its cover, but then again — and I feel like biting my tongue when I say this — maybe you should? Doesn’t the quip have some element of truth to it? Younger Afrikaners I don't think would care much, and might even think, as I do, that Jooste looked stylish in his deep coloured shirts.

but if it does have some, dubious validity, it would be this: the faux stylishness of Jooste was an indication of someone slightly too self-conscious and bordering on vain. And that could, and in retrospect should, have been a red flag when it came to his stewardship of a very large company. Is that too trivial? Or is it deeply revealing?

I was perfectly happy to completely discard the idea when something odd happened. The crypto exchange FTX collapsed. And then there were hundreds of pictures of the founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), all over the internet. Honestly, I couldn't help myself. My first thought was, he is the guy you all trusted with billions of dollars in investments. And he is wearing shorts?

As I say, one shouldn’t judge based on looks alone, but seriously, if there is a picture of SBF somewhere out there not wearing an obviously-slept-in T-shirt, I’d like to see it.

Presumably, for SBF, not wearing a suit was part of the gig. What he was cyphering by wearing shorts to investment sales pitches was that he was counter-cultural, a maverick, his own man, etc. That sartorial message was, I guess he thought, appropriate to crypto, the countercultural format of cash that was going to render fiat cash redundant.

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But even so, you have to ask, is there no correlation between looking respectable and dealing with other people’s money with respect? It’s boring to look normal, but if you are handing over your hard-earned cash to someone, surely normal is better than rumpled shorts? I see even SBF has now also found an old suit in a back cupboard somewhere. Funny how the prospect of appearing before a jury changes people.

Of course, the opposite is also true: crooks can and do dress up to convey an air of respectability. People have been doing this since time immemorial. I can’t help noticing that when Jooste did present himself before Parliament, what did he wear? Well, a nice ordinary dark suit, a white shirt and a restrained blue tie. Blue, not red.

People who work in businesses where first impressions matter — banking, insurance, stockbroking, for example — are very sensitive about looking “smart” and tend to spend small fortunes on their officewear. I would guess the tradition is simpler if you are a man (tailored wool suit, modest tie and cufflinks). After all, a “suit” is slang for an executive.

But if you are a woman, it’s probably more complicated balancing feminine tradition with the Wall Street suit ethic. One result has been the pantsuit, which is so obviously a compromise it quite often is neither one nor the other. The person who gave the pantsuit some character was Hillary Clinton: her putative constituency hashtagged their support for the “pantsuit nation”.

Several professions have developed a style that is about just slightly underplaying formality. Think of the open shirts of advertising execs, the rolled-up sleeves of politicians, and patchy-elbowed professors. They tend to perform their own kind of uncomfortable compromise.

And on the subject of pretence, it’s worth noting that Markus Braun, the former chief executive of Wirecard, who allegedly embezzled billions, adopted a style imitative of the tech genius icon, right down to the black polo neck.

But the question is, what do you make of people who deliberately flaunt the traditions of their professions: do you applaud them or worry slightly? I have to say, until recently, I would have applauded the boytjie shorts and ill-fitting T-shirt approach. Perhaps it is the rectitude of the age, but now I think of the studied ordinariness of a suit and tie as reassuringly boring. DM/BM

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