Where another city has a main street, Huntington Woods has a complex: the Gillham Recreation Center, the library and cultural center, Burton Elementary and Burton Community Park, all together, acting as the middle of the town. A place organized that way produces a particular kind of occasion, one that isn’t work and isn’t a wedding, and men are chronically underdressed for it.
The civic occasion
An award evening. A retirement. A fundraiser for something local. The invitations rarely state a dress code, because the people sending them assume everybody knows, and half the room turns up in a suit while the other half doesn’t.
Read the room by who is speaking
If somebody is going to stand up and talk, it is a suit. That single test settles nearly all of these, and it is more reliable than anything printed on the card, which is usually nothing.
One suit covers the year
Navy, plain, and the same one every time; nobody attending these is keeping an inventory. Signature Wool, $259 to $299, is the right money for something worn several times a year to rooms full of neighbors, and Roman, master tailor at Lincoln Tailor, on site in our store, hems it to the shoes you actually walk over in.
More on wedding suits, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
