More Than a Suit: a review of the HBO documentary Suited

I should have brought a box of Kleenex to Suited. The documentary is so much more than a film about Bindle and Keep, a New York based bespoke suit shop that has garnered a reputation for embracing the queer community. It’s an intimate portrait of the people that make up the heart of the business. In telling their stories, the message that comes through is the power of feeling confident in your clothes.

This can be an easily glossed over message, but it’s a vital one in the queer community. Suited brings the importance of that message to life by revealing why people come for a suit, their experience with the finished product, and a peak into what having a suit that fits means to the their larger lives.

The documentary follows a trans man getting a suit for his wedding. He wants to make sure that he isn’t identifiable as different amongst a line of men in suits that is inevitable in wedding photos. We hear about his upbringing in a rural town, follow him through surgery that is another step in having the body he identifies with, and see his wedding in a suit that fits him perfectly.

We also get to know Everett, a trans man in the beginning stages of transitioning and hear about the blatant discrimination he faces in looking for a job after law school. How having a suit is a piece towards feeling himself and being able to stand out in interviews in ways that are not about his gender.

I also appreciated how the film portrayed gender queer folks as well. A taxi driver getting a suit for her birthday and explaining that she feels comfortable in the middle. A young gender queer wanting a suit that fits both the masculine and feminine parts of themselves. They like life best when people can’t tell their gender.

And of course I cried hardest when seeing the story of a trans kid whose grandmother brought him in for a suit for his bar mitzvah. He stands in front of the mirror for his first fitting, eyes under heavy bangs and downturned mouth, explaining he doesn’t know what he wants because he has never felt comfortable in his clothes. He has never had anything that fits. Talking about not having friends at school and his struggles coming out as trans, he made me think of my own awkward and shy childhood. How much it would have meant to me to have a piece of clothing I felt good in.

For those who fully identify with their bodies, finding a suit still takes time, but it’s possible to find something off a rack. For those of us who wish to express an identity that falls outside of the norm society puts on our bodies, finding a suit that fits means having to have it altered, if you’re lucky, or custom tailored in order to have it express the way we see ourselves.

Fit is where the message in Suited begins to expand. Fit is essential to a suit, but it also applies to any piece of clothing we wear. Rae, one of the team at Bindle and Keep and the one responsible for expanding the business into the queer community, spoke after the viewing. He talked about how he wears suits less now, but wearing well-fitted suits influenced how he wears every day clothes, in terms of how he presents himself and fit.

We have all had the experience of trying on clothes and feeling bad about ourselves.  Not feeling enough – thin enough, fit enough, tall enough, short enough, etc. This is an experience we have as people. That tie, feeling awful when trying on clothing that doesn’t fit and how amazing it feels to try on clothing that does, brings the message into focus for all people, queer or not. How we feel about ourselves can start with clothes, but it gets to something much deeper – feeling confident in being who we are.

Suited made the rounds of documentary film festivals and will air on HBO today (June 20th).