Comme des Garçons Homme Plus Boiled Wool Suit

A suit sold as a suit is a different proposition from two garments that happen to match. The jacket and the trouser are sold together and cut from one boiled wool in one cream, and two pieces finished in the same run agree with each other in a way that two close creams never quite do. Boiling is something done to a cloth rather than something a cloth is made of: wool is agitated in hot water until it shrinks and the surface locks into itself, leaving a denser, flatter, slightly matted face that holds its own shape. What that does to tailoring is the point of this one. A double-breasted front is the most structured arrangement in menswear, two crossed layers and a column of hard lines, and a boiled face softens every edge of it without touching the geometry underneath. In cream the effect runs at its strongest, since a pale cloth shows a matted face where a dark one swallows it. The trouser is unlined, which in a cloth like this is a decision about movement: an unlined leg hangs from the waist as a single weight and swings, where a lined one is two cloths of different weights working against each other. Ninety percent wool and ten percent nylon, made in Japan.

Why we selected it

We take a suit only when both halves would survive being separated, and most would not. This one would: a cream double-breasted jacket that does not read as tailoring, and an unlined trouser in a cloth worth wearing under something else entirely.

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus is the line where the house builds its tailoring correctly and then declines to leave it alone, and a cream boiled-wool suit is that at its most wearable.

Materials and construction

Ninety percent wool and ten percent nylon. Jacket and trouser in the same cloth, sold together as a set. The jacket is double-breasted; the trouser is unlined. Made in Japan. Color: Cream. We hold no lining for the jacket, no button count, no vent, and no rise or leg shape for the trouser, and we will not invent them.

Fit notes

A boiled cloth holds its own shape rather than taking the wearer’s, and a double-breasted front lays two layers across the chest, so the jacket reads substantial whatever the size. The trouser is felt more than a lined one would be, since the wool sits directly on the leg, and cream shows the contents of a pocket through the cloth and the shadow of anything dark worn under the jacket. A set carries one size across both halves, so the jacket and the trouser are a single decision rather than two. The jacket in this set is the same jacket that is sold on its own as the Homme Plus Boiled Wool Jacket, one pattern in one cloth, so choosing between the two is a choice about the trouser and about the size rather than a choice about the jacket. Please ask us and we will measure both pieces with you.

Styling

Worn as a suit, with the Homme LS Button-Up under it and nothing else competing. Split, the jacket goes over the Homme Plus Wool Trousers in black, where the cream is the only event, and the trouser goes under the Homme Plus Button Cardigan, where a black top half is what the cream needs.

Care

Wool at ninety percent governs. Have both halves cleaned rather than washed, and have them cleaned together, so that one cloth stays one cloth. Heat and agitation are what shrink and felt a wool cloth, which is the argument against a machine and against a radiator. Store both pieces clean and hanging with room around them, because moths find a cream wool suit as readily as a dark one. Our care guidance covers the rest.

Related pieces

The Homme Plus Boiled Wool Jacket is this same jacket sold on its own without the trouser, and the Homme Wool Jacket is tailoring in wool alone. Everything we carry from Comme des Garçons is listed together.