Photo: Cool, comfy, and a tad literary. That’s seersucker.
By Tom Poland, A Southern Writer
TomPoland.net
Seersucker. A cool word, and cool is the word. Before AC came along, a Southern gentleman worth his salt wouldn’t be caught without a seersucker suit. Just one gentleman back home wore seersucker. With his crisp white shirt, bow tie, slicked-back hair, and blue-and-white seersucker suit, seems he had stepped out of To Kill A Mockingbird. And then for years I forgot him until an email arrived.
A Georgia gal southern to the core saw my work and photos online.
“You say you’re a Southern writer but you don’t dress like one. Send me your sizes.”
I sent ’em. Suits began to arrive, blue and white and tan and white seersucker suits from Jos. A. Banks. Brooks Brothers dress shirts, jackets, and bow ties. On special occasions I dressed the part of a Southern writer. And so I come here not to bury seersucker but to praise it.
Friends and readers, lend me your eyes. People venture out today looking like they just cleaned a mess of catfish on an old pick-up hood. I know some folks like scruffy, the new normal, but I grew up with a mother who would not walk to the mailbox without looking her finest. Vanity? No. Putting her best foot forward.
Let’s start a seersucker revival. Bring back the “the working man’s suit.” And, I’ll add, the working woman’s suit. You see, seersucker’s for women too, and wearing it shakes things up. For the heck of it I’ll go out in a seersucker suit, white linen shirt, and bow tie — handtied, of course. “Well, look at you. Meeting with the governor?”
In a rut? Don some seersucker and sally forth.
Late South Carolina columnist, Ken Burger understood seersucker’s transformative power: “Quite honestly, there’s just something about wearing seersucker that makes you feel like you’re starring in a James Dickey novel and talking to Mark Twain while having a drink with William Faulkner.”
Seersucker’s adaptable. Cormac McCarthy liked to pair a blue seersucker jacket with jeans. So do I. It’s a polished, relaxed, look—the best of two worlds. Gents, wear white bucks with your jean pairing. Your bucks can get by being a tad scuffed. With jeans only.
Seersucker creates a cooling effect. That Georgia gal again. “Once I moved to Charleston, it was a mandatory summer wardrobe item for surviving the oppressive heat of a blistering August day.” Gents, it’s like sticking a small window unit in your britches.
Seersucker’s literary. I go back now to freshman English at the University of Georgia. Wearing a blue-and-white seersucker suit, James Kilgo read from Faulkner’s “The Bear.” As he read, snow-white bracts swirled outside the classroom windows and an indelible image of dogwoods, seersucker, wilderness, a boy, and a bear materialized.
Seersucker has rules. Wear it between Easter and late fall. Go for a relaxed fit. Wear traditional white buck shoes. Don’t pair matching patterned ties with the suit. Forget pre-folded pocket squares. Never iron seersucker. Throw clip-on bow ties in the trash.
What if you commit a faux pas? Zack Hickman’s “Seersucker Manifesto” spells out your punishment. “One slight misstep and a fellow might find himself being mistaken as the fifth man in a barbershop quartet, handed a red, white, and blue boater, and hauled off against his will to the International Barbershop Quartet Convention in Kansas City, Missouri.”
I like seersucker’s working-class history. In 1909 way down yonder in New Orleans Joseph Haspel Sr. used fabric associated with workwear and railway uniforms to craft lightweight suits that could keep Southern businessmen cool and stylish in sweltering heat.
Come a sultry summer day, seersucker will keep you as cool as sliced cucumbers marinating in grandmom’s icebox. And know this. No other garment evokes such excitement. Seersucker elicits more praise than a tuxedo. It might even top some brazen soul’s birthday suit, but that’s a story for another day.
