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Zoot Suit
by Tricia

Scott has only ever owned one suit. His mom and I helped him pick it out back in '98 or '99 as he was preparing to interview for "big kid" jobs. It was olive green and not very well cut for a guy his size (he looked like a kid swimming around in his dad's sports jacket - he was way to narrow for the width of it). It lasted through many weddings and funerals - I'd say at least 20 weddings and 6 or 7 funerals. He wore it to two or three job interviews before starting at DST. He wore it twice last September to two different weddings, and on the second one realized that a huge hole had appeared in one of the pockets in the pants. He decided it was time for a new suit, despite all the celebratin' and mournin' this one had gotten him through. How, with both Glenda and I there to help, he ended up with an olive green suit in the first place, I'll never know. I wish I could go back and witness the discussion and decision making. What were we thinking. I would also like to point out that he only owned one shirt and one tie that went with the suit - Not that this is abnormal for a guy these days, I just think it's kind of funny. So many people saw him wear that suit over and over (especially family) but if I had worn the same dress to every wedding, people would have noticed.

With another wedding looming next weekend, he figured we should probably go looking for a replacement, despite my encouragement that he would be just fine wearing khakis with a shirt and tie. Let me interject here and say that there is not much that I hate more in life than a department store. They are awful. I can never find what I'm looking for. It's frustrating. So, off we went to dive into every department store in the greater Kansas City area trying to find an appropriate suit.

We had quite a few rules:

-Must be "Athletic Cut" so he doesn't look like he's swimming in the jacket
-A nice charcoal would be best, as black would be too much with his fair coloring
-NO NAVY BLUE. Navy suits make me think of yacht clubs and Andy from The Office. I think they're awful
-Preferably flat-front pants (this proved to be most difficult. WHY do men like pleated pants? They look stupid!
-Preferably no pin-stripes. Too corporate
-Must not rape our bank account.

We looked and looked and he tried a few on, and we narrowed down what we did and didn't like, and what we were willing to give up (pin-stripes, as long as they weren't too blatant, would be acceptable). After the guy at JC Penneys referred to Scott more than once as "beautiful" we were sufficiently creeped out (though slightly flattered). Finally, we found two at Dillard's that looked really great on him. One actually happened to have flat front pants (the woman at Dillard's said that only 3% of their suits have flat-front pants, we just happened to pull one out that fit most of the criteria AND were flat-front). The other was pleated, but only had one pleat as opposed to the two or three most of the others were blessed with.

So, he put one on, and I liked it - it looked really good. Then he put the other one on, and I liked it too. It looked just as good. They were the same price, so I left the final decision up to him between the two.



I think I'll have to fend the ladies off my handsome husband all night at the wedding.

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