The Suit Doesn't Fit.
In this essay, I return to a version of myself I thought I had outgrown: a young man, fresh out of university, dressed for a life he hadn't yet earned, trying to perform manhood in shoes that didn’t fit.
This piece marks a continuation of The State of Masculinity series: an exploration of how modern manhood often begins not with a question, but with a costume. For many men, our first introduction to adulthood isn’t through wisdom, ritual, or guidance, but through pressure. Performance. Appearances.
The Suit Doesn’t Fit is both memory and metaphor. It's about clothing, yes…but more than that, it's about the deeper discomfort of trying to wear a life that was never designed for you in the first place.
This is where the conversation starts: with the stories we tell ourselves when we’re just trying to belong.
The Suit Doesn’t Fit By Alex Holmes
The trousers chafed. The blazer pinched at the shoulders. The laces on my shoes were so worn out I half-expected them to snap before I even reached the door.
“You’re going to have to wear a suit, mate,” Ben said, taking a drag of his cigarette and exhaling smoke out the side of his mouth. It was 2016, and I was about to step into the next phase of adulthood…whether I was ready or not.
I nodded like I understood what he meant. I didn’t.
I was twenty-three, standing on the edge of what people call your “first real job.” No more student schedules or casual wardrobes. No more lie-ins or last-minute essays. The world had handed me a uniform: stiff shirt, polished shoes, carefully ironed trousers, and along with it, an unspoken expectation: perform adulthood, and make it look like it fits.
That night, I stood in front of my wardrobe and took stock. I didn’t own a proper suit. My options were bleak: a faded church suit from adolescence, a wedding blazer two shades too light, and a pair of trousers that clung uncomfortably to my legs. None of them matched. None of them fit. That should have been my first clue.
I learned early that manhood often means squeezing yourself into things that were never made for you, or having the money to get the perfect cut.
That first morning in the office, I looked like I belonged. Or so they told me. One of the managers nodded approvingly, “You look sharp.” My collar was stiff, my shoes cut into my heels, and my body ached with tension - but all it took was one comment for me to pretend it was all fine.
Inside, I felt like a boy playing dress-up. Impostor syndrome clung to me more tightly than my too-small trousers. Wasn’t I supposed to feel different now? More confident, assured, capable? Instead, I found myself adjusting. Slipping into roles I didn’t choose, mimicking men who moved through the world like they’d received a manual I never got. This was masculinity in my twenties: a performance no one admitted was a performance.
The suit was only the beginning.
Adulthood quickly revealed itself to be a game of appearances. You didn’t just work - you signalled. You drew attention to yourself. You demonstrated fluency in rituals of status: how to enter a room, how to shake hands, how to order wine. My colleagues talked about investments and dry-aged steak and made jokes I didn’t understand. I laughed anyway.
I followed them to fine-dining restaurants where the cheapest glass of wine cost more than my weekly groceries. I learned how to nod in the right places, how to talk about places I hadn’t been, how to fake comfort in rooms that made me feel small.
I thought that if I could master the rhythm of success, eventually I’d feel successful. But I wasn’t chasing belonging - I was trying to survive a system that rewarded polish over presence, posture over peace.
And it was exhausting.
By twenty-five, my body began to rebel. Chronic fatigue. Joint pain. Stress symptoms that didn’t match my age. Doctors ran blood tests, asked about lifestyle, and suggested I slow down. But how could I explain to them that I was tired not from doing too much, but from pretending?
It wasn’t just the suit that was too tight. It was the entire life I had tailored around an idea of manhood I didn’t choose. And I didn’t know who I would be without it.
The shift didn’t come in a cinematic moment. There was no dramatic resignation, no symbolic burning of the suit. The change came slowly, quietly, like light creeping through closed curtains.
It came the day I confessed to a friend that I hated those overpriced dinners. The evening I skipped a networking event to sit in my tracksuit, eating takeaway, and feeling more at ease than I had in months. The morning I wore a jumper and (smart) jeans to the office, and didn’t explain myself.
I had begun to loosen the seams…not just of my clothes, but of my self-image. I stopped pretending. I started choosing.
For years, I believed success meant dressing the part. But over time, I’ve learned that the most important parts of life don’t require performance. They require presence. A suit doesn’t make the man. A title doesn’t make the man. Expensive cocktails and curated conversation do not make the man.
What makes a man is who he is when no one is watching. Who he is when the suit is off, the front has dropped, and the silence has room to speak.
The best-fitting life is the one you don’t have to tailor into.
I didn’t write this essay to discredit the suit or the systems we move through, but to challenge the silence that often surrounds them. So many men live just beneath the surface of themselves…presentable, dependable, and deeply disoriented.
What happens when we stop trying to fit and start trying to feel?
What happens when success is no longer measured in titles, but in the ease of being exactly who you are?
This series is an invitation to examine not just masculinity, but the masks it so often hides behind. If this piece resonated, sit with it. If it made you uncomfortable, sit with that too.
And if, like me, you're still figuring it out, welcome.
You're in the right place.