Trash The Suit Is Madness!
A week or so ago Emma Bartley mused on whether the Trash the Dress phenom would inspire grooms to trash their suits as you might expect, top tailor Toby Luper wanted to respond…
(By the way, if you want to see what we’re on about we found this slice of weirdness – poss. NSFW)
Organising a wedding is a strange process. Never in your life will you meet such a varied group of people passionate about the area of weddings they specialise in. It is hard to find a woman who doesn’t love flowers, but I assure you that after five minutes with a dedicated florist you will have a new benchmark for floral passion. Likewise, nobody loves suits and fabric as much as a tailor. This is why I’m horrified but equally interested in the trend of ‘trash the suit’, an extension of ‘trash the dress’.
In a nutshell, trash the dress is a form of wedding photograph where the bride in her beautiful dress is photographed in a harsh environment, such as a building site, forest, or running in to the sea. It isn’t a rule, but most of these involve the bride not only getting her dress grubby but destroying it! There is some amazing trash the dress photography out there, just do a Google image search.
While the wedding dress will normally carry much more mystique than the grooms attire it goes without saying that few wedding dresses are worn more than once and I have to agree that going out with a bang could be a lot more fun than placing it in a box. But the groom’s suit represents such greater value and destroying it could be seen as madness –unless you’ve hired it from the high street and want to test out their returns and insurance policies, in which case it sounds like a jolly good laugh.
At Hemingway we have an aftercare service that offers everything from pressing ties and replacing buttons, to cleaning suits and valeting shoes – will we be able to salvage a suit that has been used as cover in a paintball fight? No chance. I could suggest you opt for our Nanoblock fabric from Holland & Sherry which is water and stain resistant – great if you’re getting married in a month with a high chance of rain (after all, we have twelve of them in England) or you’re prone to being a bit clumsy with a glass of wine but likewise, you will have a hard job removing paint from it.
I’m very much of the mind that a wedding is a personal occasion and whether you are influenced by tradition or crazy videos on YouTube you should make sure that your big day makes you happy. If that includes setting your wedding clothes on fire then that’s fine by me; just think beforehand whether your handmade bespoke suit could be put to better use in the future.
Toby Luper is the tailor behind Hemingway tailors. With 35 years experience in the fashion and tailoring industry he has dressed sports stars, celebrities and royalty. For more information call 0800 5423406 or see www.hemingwaytailors.co.uk
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Meh. I still like my idea of a dirty protest on the day.
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