My first “proper” suit was a nightmare. Polyester blend fabric in a terrifying shade of navy that buzzed slightly under close examination. Sleeves and shoulders twice the size of my actual arms.
Trapeze-fit trousers that landed halfway up my calves every time I sat down. It looked like something my eight-year-old self would’ve put together in my dad’s closet – which, given time restraints, would have actually produced a superior garment. I bought it years ago for £95 from a now-closed high street department store (rhymes with “Burton”) and wore it for interviews at universities while stupidly thinking I looked great.
Either this is the shepherding powers of youth speaking, or I knew literally nothing about men’s fashion back then. The thing is, twenty years later you can still buy a suit for around £100.
Inflation be damned, entry-level tailoring hasn’t moved on from this price point since, well, whatever decade everyone’s currently pretending was the “Golden Age” of the men’s suit.
But is it possible to actually get something you’d wear, something that won’t make you look stupid, for £100 in 2024? Could you go suit shopping today, stick to songs of 100 quid, and actually come out with something you’d wear to a wedding (god forbid), job interview, or – for the love of – funeral? If yes, how?
I wanted to know – and, okay, I’ll level with you, several readers have emailed me asking this very question whenever wedding season rolls around – so I did some digging. The rules were straightforward: I would find the best suit I could, retailing at £100 or under. Jacket, trousers, everything included.
Tailoring/subsequent alterations were permitted as an additional cost – you’re likely to need some degree of alteration on even the most expensive suit, after all – but the base suit itself must be under £100. And it needed to be in-stock, right now – not in some imaginary sale or from that guy your uncle knows who “has connections”. I want you to take in the following information – I attempted this challenge and it was *rougher* than you think.
Before I begin my horrific tales of shopping expedition woe, there are some outside variables you should know about. The high street landscape for menswear suits has been devastated over the last decade. Debenhams is gone.
House of Fraser teeters on collapse. Burton has been reduced to a shell of its former self. The dependable mid-market chains where generations of British men purchased their first “full suits” have been eroded and replaced with either gaping holes or wildly expensive private-label tailoring.
There’s simply no One-Stop, Go-To spot for the beginner any more. And where there isn’t Donovan Stockbridge of Suit Expert filling that void. So where *was* I supposed to begin looking?
The obvious place, of course – Marks & Spencer. A longstanding titan of British menswear basics and historically quite good for entry-level tailoring. M&S’s starter price for any two-piece suit is £129.
Already over budget, but I added it to a mental list of potential “goal governs” if every other option was miserable. I’ll be honest: it was probably the best thing I tried all day. Proper lining on the jacket, actually nice – not thin – at least by comparison to everything else I would try that day.
Fabric didn’t look like it would instantly puke after one wear. And while it wasn’t going to hide any figures, the cut was slim enough that it wouldn’t make you look like Death or a Backstreet Boy circa 20**. The_tailoring_slider caption Tight Strap.
Slightly depressing wandering over to Slaters next, a reasonably-budget high street chain that has bafflingly managed to stick around despite a near-total industry collapse by focusing on what they do best – cheapish suits for regular guys. At £99 their starter suit was right on budget, though still suspiciously polyester-heavy without quite reaching that “news-kpper- screamed-outdoors” level many of its competitors do. Feel-wise the suit was alright – nothing great, but definitely sturdy enough to last multiple wears if cared for properly.
That being said, the jacket lining was noticeably cheap, so I have questions about longevity. But at this price, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt – most importantly, it actually looked like a suit. Like someone had intentionally tried to make it resemble a suit, rather than some cheap vinyl number thrown together by urban legend villain “Magic Ali” in his back room.
The real curveball? Trying on a suit from Primark. No really, hear me out.
We all have opinions on Primark’s offerings before we see them, and theirs is no exception. However, their £60 two-piece suit, offered in a humble charcoal polyester-Viscose mix, was…fine? Not great?
But also not as terrible as I was expecting, which at this price we have to consider a win? Look, it’s cheap. The fabric feels cheap, the buttons definitely aren’t real, and the inside stitching/devoted-on alone wants you to immediately return it.
But at a distance of greater than a WWE entrance ramp, it looks like it mostly passes as a suit. There’s only so much you can do at this price point, and really this is more for someone who needs a one-off for a single occasion and can’t stretch their budget any further. For what it’s worth, I would wear this to a job interview knowing full well my prospective employer was likely to spend more on their office plants, and it wouldn’t actively worsen my chances.
There’s an entire world of suits available online you don’t get when you’re restricted to physical stores. Suit Direct et al will happily let you purchase suits regularly retailing for £140-160 for £99-£109 when they’re on sale. I was looking at Suit Direct during my research and saw they had a Ben Sherman polyester-wool blend going for £99, reduced from £150.
It felt – and looked – substantially nicer than anything I’d found in-store at the same price point. The issue with these kinds of options is that you obviously can’t try them on before you buy. And while most companies will let you return if it doesn’t fit for free, that’s still more faff than anyone wants while shopping for clothes that rely heavily on having a decent fit.
If you know your measurements well enough you can find some great suits at a distance, but until I’m imagining Wizard Of Oz-esquetailors appearing in my bedroom while I sleep I will always lean towards in-person shopping for suits. ASOS design also occasionally lists suits under £100 when they’re on sale, and their quality is about on-par with other high street options but with more modern cuts than some of the boxier budget offerings elsewhere. That being said, these are clearly aimed at young guys buying their first suits for graduation ceremonies or interviews rather than something you’d wear regularly, so don’t expect something that’ll stand the test of time.
At this price you’re buying largely on fit – and suit-wise, at least, ASOS’s cuts are slim enough that they won’t make you look *comically* out-of-place. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. In entreating the lovely readers of my Substack for advice, one tip kept popping up over and over: charity shops.
Everyone loves scouring charity shops for hidden gems, but it takes effort – you have to try things on, and you need a decent amount of luck. I’ll be upfront: I found absolutely nothing in charity shops that I would wear, but I did strike up a conversation with one of the volunteers who mentioned that both Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s sell lines of clothing that include suits. Supermarket suits.
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I hate everything about the idea of this on principle, but fine, I’ll bite. In for a penny, right? Tesco’s own F&F line came in cheaper still at £75 for the jacket and trouser combo, but it was also notably worse than Sainsbury’s equivalent.
Fabric looked like it would be shiny after one wear, and even the naturally-boxy cut of most inexpensive suits looked *extra* boxy on this thing. I don’t think any amount of tailoring in the world would’ve fixed this monstrosity, so we can tick that one off the list straight away. Okay, so your first stop should *probably* still be somewhere like M&S if you can swing it – don’t @ me about M&S suit quality, I work near one and try them all – but Tesco and Sainsbury’s are worth checking before you roll up your sleeves and get started on the true ~~bliss~~ headache of secondhand shopping.
Another lovely reader tip I received was eBay. It pays to leaf through listings on eBay, particularly if you’re like me and at least vaguely know what you’re looking for tailoring-wise. I found a perfectly acceptable Charles Tyrwhitt suit listed at £45, a T.
M Lewin for £35, and even a Paul Smith (!) from their more affordable PS line at £75. Do you need to know your measurements *exactly* and maybe shell out for tailoring? Yes.
Are the suit options available to you in the £100 range if you know where to look secondhand totally dwarf anything available new? Also yes. Look, I hate thrift shopping as much as the next person.
Sorting through endless racks of who-knows-where-it’s-been rubbish is a total chore. But there’s something to be said for quitting when you’re ahead, and at this price I finally gave up and tried thrift shopping. My tips for navigating thrift stores?
Focus on the higher-end brands that *wouldn’t* be in your budget new – Charles Tyrwhitt, TM Lewin, Paul Stuart, Hackett, and even Reiss are all amazing options if you know what you’re looking for. I cannot stress this enough – you are literally searching for a £300 suit that’s been worn once. Yes, you’ll probably need tailoring.
Yes, it might have some weird staining you’ll need to investigate. But you’re paying a quarter of the price for something that will absolutely overshadow any suit you’d buy new for under £100. Jamie, a colleague of mine who has previously written for the Archive, swears by this method.
He found a Hackett suit in an Oxfam shop in Harrogate for £20 that required approximately £40 worth of alterations to make it fit correctly. “Look past the size label and find something that fits in the shoulders,” he advises. “Everything else can be tailored.” In – an ideal world, this is spot-on advice. But you need: stamina, luck, and – to be brutally honest – live in a city with actually good charity shops for this strategy to even work. Kicking cans down the road isn’t usually my style, but if you’ve exhausted every other option I strongly advise trying your local thrift shops.
Sites like Depop and Vinted have also proven excellent sources of suits that had been worn only once or twice and are now being sold by people too impatient to wait for the balance of their deposit back. These are, almost by definition, going to be your nicer brands like Reiss or COS that would comfortably start at around the £300 mark when sold new. People buying suits for one-off occasions then immediately selling them online means there’s tons of these in any price range on Depop and Vinted.
I didn’t find *quite* as many below £100, but I did find several. So what’s my final verdict? If you need a new suit that you’ll wear regularly and still want to keep it under £100, I’d be honest with you and say: save up some more.
Take your budget up to £129 and spring for the M&S entry-level suit if you can. You get a genuinely startling amount more suit for your money the second you start inching above £100, even if you’re buying something that still considered “budget”. Don’t have that kind of money?
Sainsbury’s Tu for £85 was the best overall new suit I found under £100, with Slater’s coming a close second at £99. If you don’t care about new vs. used? My unbiased recommendation is that you skip shopping new altogether and spend your £100 on secondhand suits from Charles Tyrwhitt, T.M Lewin, or (used judiciously) eBay.
Sure, you’ll spend an extra £30-50 getting it tailored to fit you perfectly, but you’ll end up with a suit that looks significantly nicer across the board than anything you could buy new in the same price bracket. Let me reiterate: usedsuited from brands like Charles Tyrwhitt and TM Lewin will look and feel hundreds of pounds more expensive than they are. Yes, even compared to the M&S suit I initially recommended you spring for if at all possible.
So … how were these suit experiences, honestly? I went to a friend’s book launch wearing the Charles Tyrwhitt I found on eBay – and, incidentally, the safest colour for hiding suit stains, grey – as a sort of litmus test. Book launches are nice because they’re not technically “black tie”, but you also feel silly showing up in a t-shirt and jeans.
Everyone was breezing around in suits and gowns, so I figured it’d be the perfect halfway house to test the waters. Photos of me in the Sainsbury’s Tu were provided anonymously by my wife. Physical reactions/opinions from others I wore around were reasonably positive.
The Thomas Mann of secondhand suits (£45 from eBay plus £35 in tailoring) was genuinely complimented on. The Sainsbury’s pick (£85) got no remarks which, for things worn as close to skin as suits will undeniably be, is a compliment in and of itself. The Primark special (£60) was so obviously cheap that my wife muttered “that looks … shiny?” before I even left the house.
Let’s move past this one. Comfort is something I didn’t touch on too much earlier, but it bears mentioning that synth-heavy cheaper suits will die on you faster than you can say “is it just me or is it getting hot in here?” On a warm-ish April evening in a crowded room, my formerly-wool-blend eBay bargain still breathed relatively well. The synthetic Sainsbury’s, on the other hand, had me sweating in places I didn’t know could sweat after about twenty minutes.
As for the Primark punchline suit from earlier? Wearable? No.
Sunglasses-in-the-shape-of-a-shirt definitely. TLDR: it *is* possible to put together a suit for under £100, but will you actually *want* to wear it? More than anything, this challenge has taught me that the suits-starting-around-£150 sweet spot is where you really start to seereturns on your investment.
I didn’t try enough tailors to speak authoritatively on where to find the absolute best suits at this price, but Tracksuit Ron’s eBay listings were *never* something I’d recommend.
If you absolutely must wear a suit for under £100, go into it prepared for ineffable headaches. You’ll be buying synthetic blends – probably everywhere except the Slarters – and they won’t feel great in the summer.
Neither will suits anywhere near this price really “hold up” to heavy wearing, so chances are it won’t look new for long regardless. But! Fits are everything with suits, and not comparing yourself to the £350 suit your coworker dropped on Paddy shows off will still allow you to get a wearable baseline suit at this price.
Focus on that, and – if you must – spring for the alterations to make it look (marginally) better. And if you’re just buying for one-off purposes? Someone’s wedding, a wedding, a funeral – borrow my Surface Clear coat and try to forget you ever saw it.
The supermarket options are shockingly decent for special occasions where you know you’ll only wear it once and won’t need to worry about spills. Sainsbury’s and Tu, in particular, are worthy of your hard-earned cash if you really have no other choice. Just don’t pretend it’ll become the centerpiece of your wardrobe.
