If I’m honest clothes shopping isn’t one of my favourite things to do. Whilst I’m somewhat lucky in that I’m not particularly hard to fit the whole process just seems to take too long and the recovering introvert in me doesn’t enjoy discussing my appearance with the store staff. Still I have something of a passion for suits ever since I discovered the difference between the cheap, polyester suits of my youth and the down right exquisiteness of the full wool suit I bought for my sister in-law’s wedding. However I’m still a financial conservative at heart and whilst I’d love nothing more than to drop a couple thousand on a bespoke suit tailored to perfection I’m quite happy with something cheaper if it’s of quality and fits relatively well.
My previous work suit was a decently priced affair from yd, it’s only downside being that it used the cheaper blended fabric so as it aged it started to show rather obviously. The suit I had had before that was pure wool and only went to retirement due to the fact that I naively bought a single pair of pants for it and finding a matching pair (it was grey) proved notoriously difficult. So I figured it was time to invest in another wool suit, one that would hopefully last me for a couple years and, hopefully, wouldn’t break the bank. After searching around for a while I stumbled ASOS’ range of suits and was quite surprised at their prices.
For comparison the best you can usually do on a full wool suit in a store is going to be around $500~600, usually a little more if you’re going to invest in another pair of pants to go with it. Online you might be able to get away a little cheaper, SuitSupply goes down to about $450 with full tailoring, but getting below that usually means a trip to Vietnam, if you want something of decent quality. ASOS though had a full wool suit for about $270 as well as everything else you’d need to kit out a new work wardrobe. In the end I figured it was worth the risk and for about $470 I was able to get a suit, 2 pairs of pants and 4 shirts delivered to my door in about 5 days.
The results, as the above picture shows, speak for themselves.
First off the construction of their suits is top notch, at least on par with my store bought suits of years past. The fabric has a very subtle diagonal lining on it which makes it look a little more welcoming than a solid black fabric suit tends to. As for sizing their provided guide seems to be spot on as I ordered their long versions and they fit my rather tall frame well. The pants will probably need a bit of tailoring to take them up a bit but I much prefer that to the alternative. The suit jacket also feels like it will need a couple wears to settle in properly as the collar has a rather annoying tendency to flip itself up at the moment.
Probably my one major complaint will be in the variability of the shirts as I bought 4 of their Smart Shirts in the same size but they all fit differently. For instance the charcoal button down collar ones seem to fit perfectly in almost all regards (the sides might need to be taken in a bit) however the herringbone one has almost uncomfortably tight sleeves, especially when you bend your elbows. I had figured that since they were all pretty much the exact same design there wouldn’t be that much variability but unfortunately there is. I haven’t looked up other reviews to see if this is a widespread issue however so it might just be an isolated case.
For the price I have to say I’m quite stunned as whilst I was expecting something that was serviceable I wasn’t expecting something that would exceed the quality of what I can source here locally. There are a few quirks here and there of course however apart from getting something fully tailored this is something that should be expected. It doesn’t approach the quality of my good dinner suit however but the price of admission for that particular garment was almost double of this one. So if you’re looking for a daily suit then you really can’t go past ASOS, especially for the price.
