COLIN CAMPBELL: A good buy in the ‘80s, and plenty of mileage in it yet

I have a wedding to attend in a town just outside London and the bride-to-be was visiting her parents north of the border when I made a regular Sunday night call for an update on the news.

She came on the speakerphone and we exchanged some chat and banter about the big day ahead.

I assured her how aware I was of the magnitude of the occasion, and that arrangements were in hand to get my traditional suit, which makes only very rare appearances, dry cleaned and looking at its best.

“Yes, I’ll have seen it before,” she said. “Remind me again, when did you buy it?”

“I got it in Marks and Spencer in 1986.”

“I see, that’s 37 years ago, “ she said. There was a pause. “Your suit will be older than most of the guests.”

Ouch!

I readily conceded the piercing wit of the bride-to-be’s acerbic quip, but pleaded that it should not be incorporated into the general folklore of the wedding ahead. In other words, that murmurs did not ripple around the assembly that the senior citizen from the distant far north was clad in a suit bought not only before most guests had been born, but also before much of the town hosting the wedding had been built. These things can get out of hand.

Thirty miles outside London, I’d be only a joke or two away from wearing a suit that had been bombed in the Blitz. But regardless of that risk, I do of course intend to wear it.

It was purchased in an era when Marks was a byword for quality. I don’t think that applies to the same extent anymore. I still buy clothes from them but in terms of quality and durability there has been a downturn. But the same could be said of virtually any retailer.

I very much doubt if I’m the only man in Inverness wearing a suit bought four decades ago, not by a long chalk. The 1980s to me seems like only yesterday but it’s a long way back and was a time when things were built or tailored to last.

Where can you find anything built to last nowadays? The guiding principle in the manufacture of most goods and items these days seems to be that they should be built not to last. We have become a throwaway society, as much through necessity as over-indulgence.

The suit was bought at a time when it was not uncommon to wear one to work. Wearing a suit was seen as a sign at least of seriousness and intent.

A gym pal was complaining to me recently about what he sees as the absurd “dress down” culture of today. In his workplace, people have this summer turned up in T-shirts, flip-flops and shorts, all part of the insistence in some quarters that work has to be part of a “wellbeing” lifestyle. Some of those working from home will no doubt start their labours in pyjamas.

I’m pleased that I can still get into it. And in the thick of what is rightly termed an “obesity crisis”, with expanding waistlines all around, that is no bad thing.

I’ve also been looking at the price of rail tickets to London. You could buy two suits for that now – one for the cost going down and another for the cost coming back. In the 1980s I often got a sleeper to London for less than you pay now for daytime travel there, even allowing for inflation.

Whether or not the suit becomes a family heirloom after its owner has moved on to be replaced by yet another older generation I do not know. But its pride of place for now is assured and hopefully there will be a few more special occasion outings left for it yet. But that of course is in the lap of the gods. Men of my vintage never know if they’re destined to wear out well before their suits do.