Thanksgiving Suits

Sit back and buckle up because we’re about to hit you with a little Thanksgiving history lesson. When you picture the pilgrims, you picture the classic black Thanksgiving suits and buckled hats, right? Well think again, because they were wayyyyy more fashionable than your 7th grade U.S. history textbooks taught you. Not only were they serving corn, they were serving looks. Don’t disrespect the OG traditions of Thanksgiving by underdressing. Suit up in Thanksgiving blazers and dress pants and you’ll be as appetizing as the feast itself. Grab a men’s Thanksgiving suit to fulfill the true meaning of the holiday....outshining your cousins in the family photo.

It's a little-known, partially true fact that President Franklin D. Roosevelt wore the first men's Thanksgiving suit jacket when he decided to officially move the Thanksgiving holiday one week earlier than normal, with the goal of boosting the struggling American economy with an additional week of retail sales in the Christmas shopping season. That was 1939, and the Great Depression ended shortly thereafter. What's the connection? I'm glad you asked. You see, before men's Thanksgiving suits made their public debut, Thanksgiving was all about spending time with your loved ones doing things like taking turns saying what you're each thankful for, which, at that time was probably not much since it was the freakin' Depression, for crying out loud. Once FDR stepped out in a formal Thanksgiving suit and gave American shoppers the confidence they needed to follow suit (see what we did there) and purchase Thanksgiving blazers and dress pants of their own, the economy made a healthy recovery and more people than ever were thankful to finally have the opportunity to indulge. Although it didn't get its name until some cops in Philly coined the term in the 1950s, the resulting retail holiday we call Black Friday was born.

Once Black Friday gained popularity, the modern spirit of Thanksgiving became somewhat ostentatious, and men's Thanksgiving suits are the perfect way to embrace the attitude of extra. When you show up to your family Thanksgiving dinner in an ugly Thanksgiving suit, there's no question that you came prepared to fully exploit the holiday that openly celebrates indulgence. From subjecting ourselves to a truly unreasonable amount of casserole-based foods and napping off our tryptophan comas to rolling out of bed at 3am only to stand in line for hours and rack up enough credit card debt in one weekend to make our annual tax return laugh, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is filled with beloved traditions of American excess. So pick your over-the-top Thanksgiving suit jacket and your matching dress pants, and suit up to enjoy Thanksgiving with a "treat yo self" kind of attitude. Oh, and don't forget the bow tie.