Everyone and their mother is apparently obsessed with Suits right now. Although it ended its original run nearly four years ago, the USA legal drama—which starred Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams, Gina Torres, and Meghan Markle, in her last major acting role before she became the Duchess of Sussex—has seen an astounding resurgence this summer. According to Nielsen, Suits was streamed on Netflix and Peacock for a combined nearly 4 billion minutes in a single week after premiering on Netflix on June 17. That’s a whole lotta Suits. 

Coincidentally enough, suits, as in business attire, have also been having a bit of a moment this summer. For that, we can partially thank the sartorial eye of Derek Guy. Guy is an editor at the blog Put This On and the mind behind the Twitter account @dieworkwear, with which he’s repeatedly gone viral for his astute critique of men’s fashion. So when we started considering the various suits of Suits, we knew there was nobody better to give an expert opinion—even though Guy hasn’t actually watched the series. So we sent Guy eight photos from the show and asked for his unfiltered, honest thoughts.

How do the suits on Suits stack up? Do they help further the story of brilliant college dropout Mike Ross (Adams), who winds up working with one of NYC’s top lawyers, Harvey Specter (Macht), despite never obtaining a law license? Does the suit really make the man? Guy breaks it all down below.

The Shoulders

“Many of the characters look like they’re wearing a slightly more padded shoulder,” Guy notes. It’s an interesting look since that style isn’t as common now as it once was. “The trend for men’s suits in the last 20 or so years is to go for softer, more deconstructed cuts,” he says. This leads Guy to believe that the suits on Suits might be custom-made, even bespoke. 

“This is partly about the cut and partly about fine details, such as the stitching on the lapel,” he continues. “On the edge of the lapel, you see very fine, soft dimples. Factory-made suits will often finish this part of the lapel with an AMF machine, made to imitate a handsewn ‘pick stitch.’ But these are done in such a way that I believe they are authentically done by hand. While some factories do a handmade pick stitch, they do not do this style, which leads me to believe these are custom-made.” 

The Chests

Whether the suits were custom-made or not, Guy is confident about their design inspiration. “It appears to me that the costume designer drew inspiration from Tom Ford but wanted to ‘modernize’ it in line with popular contemporary trends,” he says. He points to the “soft” chests seen in some of the photos, as well as the slimmer and slightly shorter coat in the above image of Macht and Adams. “It’s sort of this hybrid between Tom Ford and Thom Browne.”

What’s the difference? “If you look at a Tom Ford suit, the coats tend to fit much bigger,” Guy explains. “More importantly, Tom Ford suits have a very structured chest. In tailoring, a factory or tailor will use a few pieces of material to build up the chest inside—horsehair cloth, canvas, domette, etc. Tom Ford structures their chest with a lot of material, so you end up getting this chest that almost looks like armor.”

Guy is pretty spot-on here. In a 2013 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Suits costume designer Jolie Andreatta described the suits on Suits in a very similar way. “Suits are like medieval suits of armor,” she said. “[They] tell us who the person is, what kind of background they [come from], what kind of status they have.” She also revealed that Harvey’s go-to designer was, in fact, Tom Ford. Mike, meanwhile, was often outfitted in Burberry. “It’s all about texture and color combinations,” said Andreatta, noting that Harvey loved “beautiful classic pieces,” while Mike often went for a “fun and younger” look.  

Not every suit on Suits is created equal. Guy has some style notes for Dulé Hill’s Alex Williams, whose apparel stands apart: “His lapels are narrower. The buttoning point is also higher,” he explains. “It doesn’t have the same ‘power suit’ vibe of the other characters”—which leads Guy to wonder about Alex’s role on the show. Here, too, Guy is on the money: Hill was a later addition to the cast, joining in season seven, which might explain why his character’s suits hit different.

Either way, it’s not the show’s best look. “It seems slightly strange to me why he has such a big collar when his suit lapels are so narrow,” says Guy. “Normally, when you shrink the proportions of the suit—jacket length, slim fit, the narrowness of the lapel—you shrink the other details, such as the shirt collar. Stylistically, I think he would have looked better here with a small collar because the other proportions are so shrunken.”

Costuming decisions like this are sticky for Guy, making him feel like the show’s designs aren’t telling an entirely coherent story. “There’s something strange about the mixed messages where you have all these references to power—padded shoulder, long lapel line as a result of the dropped buttoning point, and peak lapel—but with the diminutive, soft tailoring we’ve seen in the last 20 years: softer chest, slimmer fit, shorter jacket,” he says.

The Collars

The most pervasive issue Guy found with the suits on Suits was the collar gap—what happens when a jacket’s collar lifts off the wearer’s neck. “Many things can cause a collar gap—misalignment between the jacket’s shoulder line and the wearer’s shoulder line, or some tightness in the chest. I don’t know if this is a perpetual issue in the show. But if so, that would be unfortunate.” A hallmark of a good suit, according to Guy, is that the collar stays glued to the neck. “If it doesn’t, the shopper should move on and find a model that fits them better. In custom tailoring, this is something the tailors should ensure.”

Nitpicky as he may be, though, Guy is ultimately complimentary of the suits on Suits. “I think the characters look nice,” he says. As for Meghan’s business attire? Guy is choosing to sit that one out. “I can’t comment on Meghan Markle’s outfit because I don’t know anything about womenswear,” he says. “My opinion holds no weight, but for what it’s worth, I think she looks nice.”