Brigitte Bowers: Suffering through sticker shock when suit shopping

My son Casey and I were driving home after shopping for prom, both of us stunned into silence by the $640 suit in our trunk. We had bought the suit at the fourth store we’d visited that day.

Our first stop had been Vintage Faire Mall, where we tried on two suits at the Men’s Wearhouse, searched the racks at Macy’s, and almost suffered a nervous breakdown at JC Penney.

We received good service at the Wearhouse, which I appreciated because, even after 18 years of being a mother to boys, I still know almost nothing about men’s suits. In fact, I can’t fathom why men have submitted to wearing suits for so many uncomfortable, buttoned-up decades. While there are certainly variations on the design – double vs. single breasted, wide vs. narrow lapels, blue or gray vs. black – these are only slight moderations on a basic pattern that has been, on the whole, dully consistent for more than 100 years.

The Men’s Wearhouse was having a sale: two suits for $799. This was a deal, I was led to understand, and if we’d been in the market for two suits, it might very well have been a bargain. But we wanted only one suit. My son is going away to college in the fall, where he will wear flip-flops and shorts every day, and where dressing up will mean jeans and Sperry loafers.

“Can we get one suit for $400?” I asked. The answer was, of course, no.

So we tried Macy’s, where the salesman was leaning against a counter and examining his cuticles.

“I can’t really help you,” he said. “I’m busy with someone else.”

I looked around for the other customer, who was surveying sport coats hanging on the opposite wall.

“Oh,” I said, “I didn’t know. We’ll wait.”

And we did, but the salesman – salesboy, really – didn’t seem particularly inclined to help the other customer, either. So we rummaged through the racks, finally locating a dress jacket we liked.

The man looking for a sport coat had gone, and the salesboy was doing something on his computer – watching YouTube videos, probably – so we dared to approach him once more.

“Are there any pants to go with this jacket?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” he said, without offering to actually step out from behind the computer and look. Then he told us to check another men’s clothing store, one just down the road from the mall.

We were in the dressing room at Penney’s when Casey had his breakdown. I knew it was coming. We’d been through the same thing before. Casey does not have much patience for shopping. If he does not find what he wants within 20 minutes, he is ready to quit. I’d already stretched his limit by an hour.

“They don’t have anything in my size. Please can we just leave?” Casey asked. “I can’t take this anymore.”

We argued for a while until Casey blindsided me with a plea to go home so he could finish an English assignment.

Well played! I thought. But I wasn’t ready to give in just yet.

“Let’s try that store the kid at Macy’s mentioned,” I said. “If we don’t find anything there, I promise we’ll forget shopping for today and go home.”

The store was owned and operated by a guy my age. He had a very long ponytail and was wearing a gray suit with suspenders, his jacket draped over a chair by the register. We were the only people in the store.

“We’re looking for something to wear to prom,” I said.

He took out the tuxedo rental catalog.

“We don’t want to rent,” I said. (I am still not over the prom rental of 2013, which set us back $180 for a tuxedo that seemed to have been tailored for Danny DeVito.)

“Well, you don’t want to buy a tuxedo for someone his age,” he’d said, simultaneously engendering both my gratitude and trust. “Let’s look at something in a more moderate price range.”

He showed us a suit with a $595 price tag, which did seem moderate after the Men’s Wearhouse. We chatted as Casey disappeared into the fitting room to try on some slacks.

“We’re glad we found you,” I said. “Buying a suit is harder than I thought.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hard to keep a store like this going in the Valley,” he admitted. “Not many people have money for high-end clothing.”

And that was how we’d come to purchase a $640 suit.

And now we were in the car, and I was thinking about all of the things we really needed $640 for, including new struts for our family car and bills we were trying to pay off. The more I drove, and the more I thought about that $640 suit in the trunk of my car, the more I knew we could not afford it. I wanted to prove the storekeeper wrong, to show him that here in the Valley, people could afford high-end clothing. Or maybe what I really wanted to prove was that I was not a typical Valley shopper.

Casey was quiet all the way to Livingston, and then he finally said, “I didn’t think a suit would cost so much.”

I was still determined to make the purchase seem like the right thing to do. “I think that’s about the going price,” I said. “And it is a beautiful suit.”

It was, too, even without alterations, which we would get for free once we returned for a fitting. “You’ll be the best-dressed guy at the prom,” I added, though I was not entirely convinced that he would have any more fun in a $640 suit than he would in one that cost half that much.

Later that evening, I told Casey to try on the suit for his father, but he didn’t feel like modeling it.

“It’s a gorgeous suit,” I told Matt. “Go take a look at it.”

“It is nice,” he said from the closet. “How much was it?’

I told him.

“$260?” he asked, his voice muffled from inside the closet.

“No. $640,” I answered.

“Wow! $340?”

“No, Matt,” I said, and I repeated the price.

He stepped into the room. “Are you kidding?”

We looked at each other for a moment.

“I don’t think he’d have much fun at prom worrying about ruining that suit,” I said, and Matt agreed.

“I’m taking it back,” I said.

Two days later, we went to San Francisco to celebrate my younger son Everett’s birthday.

“Let’s just stop in at Macy’s and look for a suit,” I suggested. “We’ll make it quick. This Macy’s is probably better than the one in Modesto.”

Within an hour, we had bought a suit for less than $300. The store tailor did a fitting, and when the alterations are done Macy’s will ship the suit to us, free of charge.

“You need to give the Macy’s in Modesto a lesson or two in customer service,” I said to the salesman, who was older than me and had sold three suits during the time we were in the store.

He looked up from the register and smiled, probably wondering where Modesto was located.

I will return the first suit within the next few days, though I don’t really want to face the nice old hippie who sold it to me. I am sorry for his plight. It is no doubt difficult to own an upscale men’s clothing store in Modesto, and I feel genuinely guilty for the disappointment I will cause.

But even worse, returning the coat and slacks will be an admission that I am not really the kind of person who can afford to buy her 18-year-old son a $640 suit, and that I was just pretending on the afternoon I handed over my credit card to him.

This story was originally published April 17, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Brigitte Bowers: Suffering through sticker shock when suit shopping."