The Suit That Disappears
How power dresses itself as good judgement
Last Friday morning, Andy Burnham returned to Manchester wearing a dark suit, white shirt and tie. He was there to open No 10 North, an office intended to prove that national government could operate differently. After a week dressed for the King, Cabinet and Westminster, this might have been the moment to return to the informal mayoral wardrobe through which he had marked his distance from national politics. Instead, he arrived in the same dark tailoring. He had returned to Manchester, but not to the clothes that had made his distance from Westminster visible.
Five days earlier, Burnham had worn a similar suit for his audience with the King. That appearance could reasonably be explained as royal protocol. The following morning, he wore it again for his first Cabinet meeting. On Wednesday, announcing a national bus fare cap, he removed the tie and opened the collar, but remained fully suited. On Thursday and Friday, the tie returned.
Seen separately, each appearance could be explained by the occasion. Seen together, the five days look like a return to the uniform Burnham once believed he had left behind.
After leaving Westminster and becoming Mayor of Greater Manchester, he replaced the conventional ministerial wardrobe with black T-shirts, dark jeans and casual jackets. The look became so recognisable that it acquired a name, “Andycore”. Vanessa Friedman described it in The New York Times as a carefully constructed form of political communication, a way of appearing accessible, regionally grounded and distinct from Westminster convention.
One garment became central to that image. The navy Howick jacket Burnham wore during the Tier 3 dispute in October 2020 is now held by the People’s History Museum. Its catalogue records it plainly as a Howick VI coat, bought from House of Fraser. Yet within days British Vogue had described it as an “Orwellian Proletariat jacket”. Two months later, the same writer called it a “dark navy workers’ jacket” in the Financial Times, a description subsequently adopted by the museum. A mainstream department-store coat had acquired a class identity through wear, journalism and collection.
The contrast with the suit is instructive. Burnham’s Howick coat accumulated interpretation until it became politically and historically significant. The suit sheds interpretation through repetition, becoming simply appropriate. One garment was made visible as political clothing. The other retained its authority by passing as nothing more than convention.
Burnham himself was more direct. In 2022, recalling the change, he said he had slowly realised: “I don’t have to do this any more.” When asked whether he meant he was not going back to Westminster, he corrected the interviewer: “Not going back to the suits.”
That exchange changes how his first week as Prime Minister should be read. The suit was not simply another option within his wardrobe. He had already identified it as part of the system he had left behind.
This does not mean Burnham betrayed Manchester by wearing one, or that he should have met the King in a black T-shirt. Much of the response to my original comment assumed that was the argument. It was not. The question was what made the suit appear compulsory, why compliance was understood as respect, and why examining that process produced such hostility.
The comments supplied the answer.
Again and again, people described the suit as appropriate, professional, respectful and evidence that Burnham could read the room. Some argued that wearing anything else would have distracted from serious politics. Others insisted that sometimes a suit is just a suit.
That final phrase reveals more than it intends. The suit’s power does not lie only in making a man look authoritative. It lies in persuading us there is nothing political about that authority.
But context is not neutral. Institutions produce it. The palace, Parliament, Cabinet and corporate boardroom establish the conditions under which particular garments become legible as serious, respectful and correct. Nobody needs to issue an explicit order. The likely consequences of refusing the code are already understood.
The comments made those consequences visible. Any alternative was described as childish, disrespectful, attention-seeking or politically damaging. People defending Burnham were also defending the dress system around him, while insisting that no such system existed.
This is how menswear operates as infrastructure. It stabilises bodies within institutions that depend on predictability. A uniform does not need to be officially issued to regulate behaviour. It only needs to establish which bodies look as though they belong.
The office suit is unusually effective because it conceals its own regulatory work. Military and occupational uniforms announce membership. The suit identifies membership while pretending merely to reflect good judgement. Its repetition allows the wearer to disappear into the role, presenting institutional authority as personal competence.
Burnham once described leaving Westminster as realising that he no longer had to wear a suit. Within five days of returning at its highest level, he had worn one every day. Yet the most persistent response was that there was nothing to interpret.
Most people may not even have registered the repetition. That is precisely how the suit works. Each appearance seemed individually appropriate: the King, Cabinet, a policy announcement, government meetings, No 10 North. Seen separately, every suit could be explained by the occasion. Seen together, they reveal the uniform.
The response to my original comment completed the process. Once the suit was treated as political clothing, it was defended as protocol, respect, professionalism, context and common sense. Those terms did not merely defend Burnham. They returned the suit to neutrality, turning an unwritten obligation into personal judgement and institutional conformity into sensible choice.
By Friday, Burnham had worn the same uniform every day, yet the suit had become almost impossible to see. It disappeared not because nobody looked at it, but because the system had already taught us how not to.
If this essay changed how you see a suit, share it with someone interested in clothing, politics or how power makes itself look natural.
About the author
Professor Andrew Groves is Director of the Westminster Menswear Archive at the University of Westminster. He researches and writes about menswear, archives and the systems through which clothing acquires authority and value.
Alongside his academic work, he independently advises fashion brands and cultural institutions on heritage strategy, archive development, exhibitions and cultural research.
New essays on menswear and the systems clothing makes visible, every Thursday.