The suit I wore for my interviews at university was awful. Kind of-grey polyester in a paintbrush flappy kind of way. Padded shoulders that made me look like I’d dipped an American football in a swelling aerosol can.
Saggy trousers that wouldn’t stay up past my ankles, making me look like I’d raided my dad’s wardrobe in a game of dress up – except that they would’ve looked better than what I actually wore. If you were wondering, that was £95 from Umbert, in case you’re wondering. And I’d rocked up to give what was quite possibly the biggest talk of my life so far wearing this monstrosity like it was the best thing since, well, tailored clothing.
And actually, looking at photos from the day, I don’t think anyone could tell I wasn’t wearing something nice. So maybe I did look smashing.
Or maybe I had no concept of how horrible my suit looked.
Perhaps it’s a mixture of both. The point is, twenty years on from that day, you can still get a suit for £100. Ballflation and the death of the High Street be damned, there’s still nearly four Brandonives worth of money that you can part with and still have something come back with two matching bits and the word ‘suit’ stitched onto the inside label.
But is it possible to actually buy a suit that doesn’t look like aforementioned school prom disaster and isn’t patently obvious you’ve tried to wear it to interviews and meant to wear trousers? That actually looksnice? We set out to find out, because i.e clothes, and also because I get sent emails every wedding season from you lovely readers wondering where to buy affordable suits.
The rules were simple. Under £100. Jacket, trousers, everything included.
It could wriggle its way into our budget with the help of some alterations if need be – after all, tailoring is required for even the most expensive suits – but the suit itself couldn’t exceed that magic amount. And it had to be available to buy now. No trusting ‘it’s on sale next week in the Warehouse’ or ‘my mate down the steroids market can get you one for cost’.
Understansbd?” So yeah. This was harder than I thought it would be. Probably down to me having low expectations.
Here’s why. In recent years, your best bets for a budget suit have been shredded. Debenhams is no more.
House of Fraser might as well be for all the new stock they’re selling. Burton’s been operationally slimmed down. The places where generations of British men got their first suit have been gutted, leaving only fast fashion online options or much pricier end tailoring.
Marks & Spencer was my first port of call. The sleeping giant of men’s basics has historically been a good bet for those wanting an entry-level suit. Turns out they still are.
Start price for a full suit? £129. That’s over budget already but I figured I’d keep it in mind as a potential treat myself if everything cheaper was abject failure. The suit itself was decent – lined jacket, nice thick fabric that didn’t instantly look like it’d poke through after one wearing, and a classic cut that wouldn’t make you look like Kris Jones’ pompier twin or an undertaker’s assistant.
Major plus was that you can get stuff tailored, so if your shape doesn’t slake to M&S’s European supermodel standards you’re not totally stuck. Next up was Slaters. The fitting room-bound dinosaurs that have single-handedly survived the downfall of the high street thanks to a twin-pronged approach of great value and just focusing on what they’re good at – NORMAL SUITS FOR NORMAL PEOPLE.
Value? Depressingly good. Introductory suit starts at £99.
Just under budget, but let’s be honest, it was £1 under budget. Fabric looked like utter garbage, but then it was £99 so what did we expect? No “iron aftercare” sheen that comes with budget suits made of largely recycled bin bags.
Constructed it felt alright, although the lining on the jacket was worryingly thin. But you know what? It looked like a suit, unlike my experiences trying on so-called “suits” from certain other stores we could legally mention in this article.
Primark had a cheeky two-piece suit in the £60 zone. Charcoal polyester-viscose blend that looks like thickishly coloured oven-sript upon closer inspection, sure, but again. That price point.
If you’re stood more than arms-length away from yourself in a mirror, it actually looks like a suit. I fully expected to find sock-eyed hidden messages detailing how it was made by child labour when I looked inside the jacket, but it was pasable. In a fire, and you needed to buy something that at least kind of looked like a suit with no way of stretching your budget?
I’d buy the Primark one. Don’t laugh – it’s better than you think. Online options were, as always, both better and worse.
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Suit Direct and similar frequently discount suits that retell for the £140-160 range down into the low £100s. During testing, I found a Ben Sherman polyester wool blend reduced from £150 to £99 that actually looked and felt a lot better than anything I’d found in the high street at the same price point. The obvious issue is you’re buying sight unseen.
And returns on suits are always a bit of a faff. But if you know your size and are prepared to risk keeping it, this is where your £100 goes the furthest. ASOS do design some nice, modern-cut suits these days that dip into the£90s when they’re on sale.
Though again, you’re not getting anything that’s going to stand up to examination up close. It’s cheerful enough, and at least has a modern cut that doesn’t make you look overwhelmingly boxy like a lot of budget high street suits. Definitely aimed at kids buying their first suit for uni or interviews rather than something you’d wear regularly, but passable if it’s new and won’t be seeing your bum nearly every day.
There’s always eBay, where I found a perfectly acceptable Charles Tyrwhitt suit that was stocked last summer and came with the ridiculous CCS price tagging still attached for £45. I’m also looking at you here, T.M Lewin for £35 and Paul Smith… err, PS for £75. Caveat being that you need to know your size very well as these are being sold by private individuals, but the quality difference between something that was £300 two years ago and something being sold new for £100 is night and day.
Similarly good results can come from hunting in thrift stores and charity shops, although this requires a lot more dedication than wandering into Oxtrams and happening across the suit equivalent of Gucci loafers. Several of my colleagues swear by this method – most notably Jamie, who found a Hackett suit in an Oxfam shop in Harrogate for £20 that required £40 worth of alterations to fit correctly. “Forget the size label and look for suits that fit in the shoulders,” he says. “Everything else can be altered if you factor that into your budget.” Clearly requires decent thrift stores around you that get good donations – not everyone lives near Harrogate. But if you’ve got the time and patience to dig around, you’ll find absolute bargains.
Depop and Vinted are becoming increasingly good sources for this kind of thing too, with plenty of barely-worn Reiss and COS-style suits coming up that were clearly bought for weddings/events and then almost immediately sold on when someone saw the price tag for the first time. My advice would be to Google ‘buying suit advice’, read the tips, and then go into it cold. You’ll find stuff, I promise.
Most of my decent eBay finds were under £100, and it felt like every time I refreshed the ‘Brand Suits under £100’ search I found another one. However! If you absolutely need something new, dependable, and under £100 then I did eventually find something worth recommending.
And no, before you ask, it’s not Primark. Stretching your budget to £129 and buying the M&S Essential cotton-blend suit is really the best place you can look for a new suit at this budget. It feels and looks like a significantly better product than anything at the sub-£100 price point, so if you can swing it either by saving for longer or finding £30 odd elsewhere I’d seriously consider it.
Otherwise, my actual full-price recommendation is the Sainsbury’s Tu suit for £85. It’s not great. It’s polyester.
The trousers are almost identical to the XL pair I own that I Bought for about £20 a decade ago. But honestly? For new, it was the most-wearable suit I tried on under £100.
Tesco have something similar for £75 but we binned it immediately; the material feels cheap and was literally see-through under a bright light. Don’t bother. Secondhand, however, is where you’ll find the best stuff at the best prices.
You know the rule with buying trousers online, right? Ones that feel like £300 but have an £100 price tag? It’s twice as true for suits.
Spend the extra money on getting a secondhand suit tailored properly and you’ll end up with something that looks way better than your budget will let on. Yes, you’ll have to dig around on eBay. Yes, you’ll probably have to know your size pretty well as you won’t be able to leverage much away with tailoring on cheap suits.
But brand-name secondhand suits that look wonderful are out there. I promise. So, verdict?
If you need a suit that you’ll wear on the reg – interviews, office wear, important meetings and whatnot – start saving until you can hit that £150-200 mark where the M&S Eco Wise stuff, Charles Tyrwhitt sales and Suit Direct’s mid-range suit kick in. Honestly. It is worth it.
I know, I know – everyone here is wearing suits every day, what do we know?
You can get cheap stuff that sorta works. But until you’ve held a £300 suit in your hands next to a £100 one, you don’t realise how poor cheap suits feel and look in comparison.
If you absolutely cannot spare that much? You can get new suits for under £100 that don’t look totally horrific. It’ll likely be synthetic.
It probably won’t last forever, even with alterations. But focus on getting a good fit – even the cheapest suit can look decent if it fits well – and spend the rest on tailoring to make sure it looks as expensive as possible. Needing one for a one-off rather than everyday wear?
Again, I’d say check out the supermarket options, particularly now Sainsbury’s stock brand SUITS and not chinos with a big ‘SUITS!’ banner across them. Wear it once, get stains on it? Who cares – you were already going to throw it away after giving up on finding a decent secondhand suit on eBay.
