The Taylor Sportsplex keeps a lot of young athletes busy across a lot of seasons, and every one of those seasons ends in the same fashion. A room somewhere, a meal, speeches, awards handed out, parents taking photographs. The boy who has spent months in kit is asked, for one evening, to look like something else, and he generally owns nothing for it.
Why families under-buy for this
Because it feels minor next to a graduation or a wedding, so they improvise: a shirt he already has and whatever trousers are clean. Then the photographs come back and it is the only picture of him from that whole season in which he is not in uniform.
What it actually needs
A jacket. Not a full suit, which overshoots most sports banquets, but a jacket over a shirt with a collar. It’s also the garment he’ll reach for at every similar evening over the next few years, which is more use than a suit gets at that age.
Buying it as a jacket
Select suits on our floor sell as separates, so it can be bought on its own rather than orphaned from a suit. Roman, master tailor at Lincoln Tailor, on site in our store, sets the sleeve and makes sure the collar lies flat when it is worn open, which is how a boy will always wear it.
Also for Taylor: A Mall That Opened in July 1970. More on style consulting, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
