5 hours ago
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It’s a month until my wedding, and my suit has arrived in the post, unceremoniously crammed into a plastic postage bag. I wasn’t expecting it to come from China, but China is of course where things come from. Unbagging the crinkled jacket and trousers for my supposed Big Day felt a little deflating.
Although I’m not sure what I did have in mind. I’ve never fantasised about getting married. As a gay woman, this wasn’t even an option for me until 2013. In fact, the closest I ever came to daydreaming about this occasion was when I was around four and I’d inferred from Disney movies that “getting married” was the act of a prince ballroom dancing with a princess. The dancing was neither here nor there, but I knew I wanted to be the prince.
There wasn’t a single a-ha moment when I twigged that feminine clothes made me feel like the world’s most reluctant drag queen (a drag peasant?), but gradually I embraced being butch. And casual butch I can do – wearing Carhartt, Finisterre, even M&S menswear for that middle-aged dad look.
Then it comes to formalwear. Not that “formal” was what I had in mind aesthetically for the wedding (so far it’s looking more like a very slightly upmarket children’s birthday party). But turning up on the day dressed like a contractor feels like a tantrum, and there’s no small part of me that wants to look nice, whatever that means. I settled on the idea of a suit: something classic and well tailored.
In women’s sections of high-street shops, lurid blazers with flouncy embellishments seem to whisper to each other about me, like a pack of vicious teen girls who only found out what a lesbian is by watching a controversial episode of their favourite soap. After several trips like this, I hadn’t tried anything on, and bespoke women’s suits from some of the beautiful female tailors of Savile Row are financially out of the question.
It’s surprising to me how stressed I’ve become about looking good on my wedding day. But weddings get to you. No matter how much of a non-wedding wedding you think you’re having, it’s still … a wedding. While doing my utmost to queer the term “bridezilla”, I’m just a woman looking for a suit that doesn’t make me look like a member of the shadow cabinet.
When the desperation hit after another three hours’ Googling variations on “women’s suit wedding androgynous”, I finally submitted to the eerie siren song of a site claiming to make affordable bespoke suits. With its slick UX and promise to solve an issue that had now been consuming me for months, I was sold. I designed my perfect suit – dark navy, streamlined and flattering without any frills – added it to my cart and entered my card details in a trance.
A month later my AI-generated, SEO-advertised, Shein-era bag of “what did you think you were getting?” flew in from Shanghai. I’d thought I was ordering it from a Europe-based company, but the item had been “dropshipped”, sent directly from the manufacturer rather than the e-commerce retailer I bought it from. The jacket was at least five inches longer than what I thought I’d ordered, and putting it on felt a little bit like trying on one of my dad’s blazers as a kid.
The suit looked better after having been left to hang for 24 hours, but marriage material it is not. After a brief identity crisis in which I wondered whether my gender expression might be “scam victim”, I managed to override a lifetime’s worth of social conditioning and enter a full-on menswear store. I’d been drawn to the brand, Percival, since it released a Seinfeld-inspired collection. Even if I’m way more of a George than a Kramer. The moment I walked through the door, I also managed to find a near-perfect outfit. Which turned out to be a green linen suit – exactly the same one that was worn by Sadiq Khan last year. My partner tried to console me on this matter by reminding me that “we did vote for him”.
Yes, I’ll be taking my Sadiq suit to a tailor to shorten the arms and bring in the shoulders. No drastic alterations, though. Even if you have boobs, I’ve learned, the term “menswear” should be consigned to the past, along with bathroom carpeting and lobotomies. While we’re at it, bring on the grooms in white dresses.
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Eleanor Margolis is a columnist for the i newspaper and Diva
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