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Growing up in the British capital during the 2000s, I was always immersed in a world of suits. They adorned City financiers hurrying through the Square Mile. They were worn by dads in Hyde Park, playing with footballs in the golden light. At school, a cheap grey suit was our mandatory uniform. Traditionally, the suit has served as a costume of seriousness, signaling authority and professionalism—traits I was told to aspire to to become a "man". However, until lately, my generation seemed to wear them infrequently, and they had all but disappeared from my mind.

Then came the newly elected New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Taking his oath of office at a closed ceremony wearing a subdued black overcoat, pristine white shirt, and a distinctive silk tie. Riding high by an innovative campaign, he captured the world's imagination like no other recent mayoral candidate. Yet whether he was celebrating in a hip-hop club or appearing at a film premiere, one thing remained largely unchanged: he was almost always in a suit. Loosely tailored, modern with unstructured lines, yet traditional, his is a quintessentially middle-class millennial suit—well, as common as it can be for a generation that seldom bothers to wear one.

"The suit is in this weird place," says style commentator Derek Guy. "Its decline has been a slow death since the end of the second world war," with the real dip arriving in the 1990s alongside "the rise of business casual."

"It's basically only worn in the strictest settings: marriages, funerals, and sometimes, legal proceedings," Guy explains. "It's sort of like the traditional Japanese robe in Japan," in that it "fundamentally represents a custom that has long ceded from daily life." Many politicians "don this attire to say: 'I represent a politician, you can trust me. You should vote for me. I have legitimacy.'" Although the suit has traditionally signaled this, today it performs authority in the hope of gaining public trust. As Guy elaborates: "Since we're also living in a liberal democracy, politicians want to seem approachable, because they're trying to get your votes." To a large extent, a suit is just a subtle form of performance, in that it enacts masculinity, authority and even proximity to power.

This analysis stayed with me. On the rare occasions I need a suit—for a ceremony or black-tie event—I retrieve the one I bought from a Japanese retailer a few years ago. When I first picked it up, it made me feel sophisticated and expensive, but its slim cut now feels passé. I imagine this sensation will be all too familiar for many of us in the global community whose families come from somewhere else, especially developing countries.

It's no surprise, the everyday suit has lost fashion. Like a pair of jeans, a suit's shape goes through cycles; a particular cut can therefore characterize an era—and feel rapidly outdated. Consider the present: looser-fitting suits, echoing a famous cinematic Armani in *American Gigolo*, might be in vogue, but given the cost, it can feel like a significant investment for something destined to fall out of fashion within a few seasons. But the attraction, at least in certain circles, persists: in the past year, major retailers report tailoring sales increasing more than 20% as customers "shift from the suit being daily attire towards an appetite to invest in something special."

The Symbolism of a Mid-Market Suit

Mamdani's preferred suit is from a contemporary brand, a Dutch label that sells in a mid-market price bracket. "He is precisely a product of his upbringing," says Guy. "In his thirties, he's not poor but not exceptionally wealthy." To that end, his mid-level suit will appeal to the group most likely to support him: people in their 30s and 40s, university-educated earning middle-class incomes, often frustrated by the cost of housing. It's exactly the kind of suit they might wear themselves. Not cheap but not extravagant, Mamdani's suits arguably don't contradict his stated policies—which include a capping rents, constructing affordable homes, and fare-free public buses.

"It's impossible to imagine Donald Trump wearing this brand; he's a luxury Italian suit person," observes Guy. "As an immensely wealthy and was raised in that New York real-estate world. A status symbol fits seamlessly with that elite, just as more accessible brands fit well with Mamdani's cohort."

The legacy of suits in politics is long and storied: from a former president's "controversial" tan suit to other national figures and their notably impeccable, custom-fit sheen. Like a certain UK leader learned, the suit doesn't just dress the politician; it has the power to define them.

The Act of Banality and Protective Armor

Maybe the key is what one academic calls the "enactment of banality", summoning the suit's long career as a standard attire of political power. Mamdani's particular choice leverages a deliberate modesty, not too casual nor too flashy—"respectability politics" in an inconspicuous suit—to help him connect with as many voters as possible. However, some think Mamdani would be aware of the suit's military and colonial legacy: "The suit isn't neutral; scholars have long pointed out that its modern roots lie in imperial administration." Some also view it as a form of protective armor: "It is argued that if you're a person of color, you might not get taken as seriously in these white spaces." The suit becomes a way of signaling legitimacy, perhaps especially to those who might doubt it.

Such sartorial "code-switching" is hardly a new phenomenon. Even iconic figures once wore formal Western attire during their early years. Currently, other world leaders have started swapping their typical fatigues for a black suit, albeit one without the tie.

"In every seam and stitch of Mamdani's image, the tension between insider and outsider is visible."

The attire Mamdani chooses is deeply symbolic. "As a Muslim child of immigrants of Indian descent and a progressive politician, he is under pressure to conform to what many American voters expect as a marker of leadership," notes one expert, while simultaneously needing to navigate carefully by "not looking like an elitist selling out his non-mainstream roots and values."

Yet there is an acute awareness of the double standards applied to suit-wearers and what is read into it. "That may come in part from Mamdani being a younger leader, able to adopt different personas to fit the occasion, but it may also be part of his multicultural background, where code-switching between languages, traditions and attire is common," commentators note. "White males can remain unnoticed," but when others "seek to gain the power that suits represent," they must meticulously negotiate the codes associated with them.

In every seam of Mamdani's official image, the tension between somewhere and nowhere, insider and outsider, is visible. I know well the discomfort of trying to fit into something not designed with me in mind, be it an cultural expectation, the society I was born into, or even a suit. What Mamdani's style decisions make evident, however, is that in public life, image is never neutral.