Bring Back Seersucker

Seersucker. A cool word, and cool is the word. Before AC refrigerants R-410A and R-22 came along, a Southern gentleman worth his salt wouldn’t be caught without a seersucker suit. I grew up inland, in a near seersucker-free zone. One, just one Georgia gentleman back home wore seersucker. With his crisp white shirt, bow tie, slicked-back hair, and blue-and-white seersucker suit, it’s like he had stepped out of To Kill A Mockingbird. And then I forgot him until a certain email arrived.

I describe myself as a Southern writer, a blue-collar writer, too, which means blue jeans, which brings me to a tale of being upbraided and showered with gifts.

A Georgia gal southern to the core saw my work and photos online. She emailed me using a nickname, a handle as CB aficionados would say.

“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. Powder blue and white and tan and white seersucker suits from Jos. A. Banks. Brooks Brothers dress shirts and jackets and bow ties from Brooks Brothers and Ted Baker. Everything came together with style and comfort and I came to appreciate these wondrous gifts. On special occasions I dressed the part of a Southern writer. Never failed to get reactions.

I’ll tell you what. Suit me up and give me an office on Charleston’s King Street and I’ll set the great Southern novel on a sultry island with a high priest of voodoo in a seersucker-free zone. But I come here not to bury seersucker but to praise it.

Friends, subscribers, and writers, lend me your eyes. Take a hard look at style today. Seems to me business casual led to yardwork casual. Too many people venture out with no dress code, like they just cleaned a mess of catfish out back on an old pick-up hood. Now I know some folks go ultra casual, i.e., scruffy, as 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. Pride.

I’m a blue collar writer as subject matter goes but I’m no fan of slobs. I’d love to see a seersucker revival. Bring a bit of style to life. Bring back the fashionable fabric once known as “the working man’s suit.” And, I’ll add, the working woman’s suit.

You see, seersucker’s for women and men, and wearing it does good things. 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. People walk over. “Well, look at you. Where have you been? Meeting with the governor?”

Feel like you’re in a rut? Create a new you. Don some seersucker and sally forth.

It feels good to wear, physically and emotionally. 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. For me it’s a blue-collar, polished, but relaxed, look—the best of two worlds. Gents, wear white bucks with your jean pairing. White suede bucks match the textured look of seersucker, and the white shoes echo seersucker’s white stripes. Your bucks, by the way, can get by being a tad scuffed.

Seersucker’s functional. It creates a natural cooling effect. That Georgia lady had this to say. “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 and turning it on high.

Seersucker’s Southern and 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. When I think of To Kill A Mocking Bird, I see Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch in a three-piece seersucker suit. Remember Andy Griffith and his seersucker suits with suspenders on “Matlock?” Barney Fife would deck himself out in a seersucker suit topped off with a straw hat and a bow tie when on the town. Overkill, sir.

Like kudzu, seersucker’s deeply interwoven into the South’s cultural identity. If you wear the icon be aware. Seersucker has standards. Wear it between Easter and late fall. Go for a relaxed fit. Wear traditional white buck shoes (hard to find of late). 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. Learn to tie a real bow tie.

But what if you create a faux pas? Zack Hickman’s “Seersucker Manifesto” advises would-be wearers of the puckered fabric to know the rules. “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.”

Being a blue-collar Southern writer I like seersucker’s working-class history. In 1909 Joseph Haspel Sr. used a 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 cool too. As cool as sliced, marinated cucumbers in grandmom’s refrigerator. And know this. No other garment evokes such a sense of place or excitement. Sartorial 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.