How to Buy Your First Suit (Navy, Two-Button, $400–800)

Navy two-button — and skip black

Navy goes to weddings, interviews, court, dinners that used the word “jacket,” and a funeral if you are not immediate family in a black-only room. It is not a black suit. Black reads as staff, as evening, as a rented costume that photographs like a hole. Charcoal is excellent and slightly more sober; buy it second. Pattern, peak lapels, and double-breasted can wait until you know whether you will wear a suit twelve times a year or twelve times a month.

Front: two-button, single-breasted, notch lapel. Three-button is a 1990s throwback unless you already wear it. Cloth: 100% wool, Super 100s to 120s. Super 150s and higher is marketing for cloth that shines and wears through. Mid to dark navy, not midnight that photographs black, not a bright royal. Trousers unfinished at the hem, room to sit, a slight break. This is the whole brief. The navy blazer is a different garment — do not orphan this jacket onto chinos and call it a blazer. Keep the trousers with it.

• Colour: navy, mid to dark — skip black for the first suit
• Front: two-button, single-breasted, notch lapel
• Cloth: 100% wool, Super 100s–120s, not polyester “performance” as the default
• Budget: $400–800 for the suit + $80–200 alterations

Canvas versus fused — what you are actually buying

The chest of a jacket is either fused (a glue sheet bonding the wool to a interlining), half-canvassed (canvas from the shoulder through the chest, fuse below), or full-canvassed (floating canvas through the whole front). Pinch the cloth on the chest between two fingers and slide. A fused jacket is one stiff sandwich. A canvassed jacket has layers that move. Fused jackets at the $150–300 rack will bubble across the chest after heat, sweat, and a few dry cleans. That bubble does not come out.

In the $400–800 band you can find half-canvas from SuitSupply, Spier & Mackay, some Brooks Brothers and J.Crew factory, and a number of made-to-measure houses on a sale. Full canvas at this price is rare and worth asking about; full canvas as a default starts closer to $1,000–1,500 from a decent maker. A fused jacket at $500 with a designer label is still fused. Ask. If the salesperson cannot tell you, assume fused. A $450 half-canvas navy two-button in Super 110s wool is a better first suit than a $900 fused fashion suit with a skinny 14cm hem.

The $400–800 range that actually works

Below $300, off the rack in 2026, you are usually in poly-wool or poly-viscose with a fused chest. It will photograph fine for one wedding and shine at the seat and elbows by the second season. $400–800 is where 100% wool, a half-canvas or at least a better fuse, a lining that is bemberg or a decent cupro rather than cheap acetate, and a working buttonhole on the sleeve start appearing. You are not buying Savile Row. You are buying a suit a tailor can finish.

Made-to-measure in this band (Indochino on a good week, some regional tailors’ entry MTM, SuitSupply MTM when it is on offer) can solve a drop or a long arm that ready-to-wear will not. It cannot solve a house that cuts a skinny fashion shoulder. Ready-to-wear plus a good tailor is the first-suit default; MTM is a second-suit decision after you know your shoulder. Two-trouser navy in this range is the unglamorous upgrade that doubles the life of the jacket. Hang it on a shaped hanger, empty the pockets, and do not dry-clean it after every wear — press more often than you clean.

Alterations budget: $80–200, spent in the right order

Measure chest, waist, shoulder, and inseam with a tape before you walk in. Off-the-rack sizes assume a man-shaped average that may not be you. Shoulder seam should end where your shoulder ends — if the shoulder is wrong, walk away; recutting a shoulder is not an $80 job. Jacket length should cover the seat. Sleeves show 1–1.5cm of shirt cuff. Trousers sit at the waist, not the hips.

Jacket sleeves and trouser hem are almost always required ($20–40 a side for sleeves, $20–40 to hem, more if you want a cuff). Waist suppression on the jacket and a trouser taper are common. A $500 suit with $150 of tailoring beats a $900 suit that still pulls. Bring the cap-toe oxfords you will wear; a tailor hemming over trainers will get the break wrong. Learn four-in-hand and half-Windsor before the morning of, on a 7.5–8.5cm grenadine or repp, not on the way to the venue. Skinny suiting — 14cm hem, painted-on thigh, jacket that cannot button — is the most expensive way to look dated. You should be able to sit without the waistband cutting in.