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Over the last year or so, I’ve thought about suits more than I have in the past 10 years combined. Chalk it up to the pro-suit agitprop flooding my algorithms (or the weddings suddenly crowding my calendar), but the fact remains: suits are very back, and I really needed a new one.
Give me an excuse to shop, and that’s exactly what I’ll do. So over a weeks-long blitz this past spring, I tried on dozens of suits. Some were good, some were fine, some felt like they were already old (in a bad way), and some felt a little too new (also in a bad way). But none in my budget looked the way I wanted them to—until I stumbled upon Madewell’s newly-introduced Roebling Suit.
In case you missed it, Madewell's been on a bit of a tear recently. Thanks to an inspired turnaround effort led by a who’s who of industry legends, what was once a denim-focused label has evolved into one of the better selections of contemporary menswear at its price point. I live fairly close to a Madewell Men’s store and was curious about its revamped offering, so trying the Roebling suit seemed like an obvious choice.
To be honest, I didn’t want to like it. I wanted it to help me realize that what I already owned was perfectly fine and that I didn’t need another suit to feel like a self-actualized person. It did the opposite. After a few try-ons to adjust for sizing, I looked in the fitting room mirror and let out one of those sighs that sounds like you’re disappointed when you’re actually just in awe. Sure, the trousers needed to be altered a touch, but the Roebling was otherwise perfect—the exact suit I was hoping to find, with zero notes.
The Roebling fits relatively relaxed, but it has enough shape in the right places to avoid veering into zoot suit territory (not a bad look if that’s your thing, just not what I was searching for). The lapels are beefy enough to distinguish it from other popular off-the-rack options—most notably J.Crew’s Ludlow and Todd Snyder’s Madison—but not beefy enough that they feel tied to a specific era. The skirt is also a touch longer, a nice change of pace from other modern OTR options that lean slim and short. The pants are full but not sloppy, and the tacked cuffs are a nice vintage touch.
I went down two sizes in the trousers. (Either I don’t know my actual waist size or they run a touch big—or both.) After adjusting for the higher rise, I had my tailor take them up a couple of inches, a normal procedure for guys with shorter legs like me. I took my normal size in the jacket, made zero adjustments, and have zero regrets.
To say I loved the final result is an understatement. I wore the Roebling to the wedding I bought it for and nearly scored a contact high from how great I felt in it. The pants were somehow airy and hardy, and stayed that way throughout the evening. The jacket hugged my body in exactly the places I wanted it to without inhibiting my range of movement. I’ve spent the couple of months ever since finding excuses to wear it, or just breaking out the trousers solo when the full kit feels like overkill.
500 bucks isn’t nothing, but compared to alternatives in the same price range, it felt like so much suit—the beautiful Italian fabric, the spot-on cut, the endless versatility—for so little money. So long as there’s even the faintest hint of chill in the air, I’ll be looking for reasons to wear it into the ground.