A retirement dinner after thirty years at Ford is a Dearborn evening with a particular audience: everyone you ever worked beside, looking at you for one night. Most men reach for the suit they have. It fit a different man, ten years ago. This is the one evening to buy the suit instead.
Why buy, at the end
Because it isn’t the end of the suit. The retirement dinner is the first of the grandchildren’s graduations, the weddings, the funerals of friends, and this suit goes to all of them. A half-canvassed suit, $300 to $500, premium wool bought as closeouts, is built to shape to a man over years, and it has years ahead of it.
Fitted to the man of sixty-five
Not the man of thirty-five. A rack that runs 34 short to 70 long, portly included, holds his size now at the same price as every other size, and the consultant fits the chest and the waist he has, not the ones in the wedding photograph.
Navy, and the toast
Navy, plain, a white shirt. He’ll be asked to stand and say something, so the jacket is fitted buttoned, standing, glass in hand, at the mirror. Roman, master tailor at Lincoln Tailor, on site in our store, sets the hem to the shoes he’ll stand in.
Also for Dearborn: The Interview at Ford World Headquarters. More on style consulting, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
