When John Lewis reports that its own-brand suit sales are up 68 per cent year on year, it’s hard to dismiss men’s tailoring as a category in decline.

If you source, sell or merchandise men’s suits, this is a moment worth paying close attention to. The signals are converging: return-to-office mandates, a renewed appetite for occasion dressing and a generation of men who never really wanted to wear trainers to a client meeting in the first place. For retailers, that adds up to a genuine commercial opportunity, and the sales data to back it up is already on the table.

The numbers behind the comeback

The data is striking, and it’s coming from retailers you trust. John Lewis didn’t just see a modest uptick; it reported formal outerwear sales up 584 per cent year on year in 2025. Marks & Spencer, meanwhile, sold 37,500 suits priced at £120 in a single month, reflecting an 18 per cent increase in suit sales over two years. These aren’t boutique anomalies. These are high-street bellwethers telling you something important about where consumer demand is heading.

The broader market context supports the trend. The UK clothing market climbed to an estimated £67.8bn in 2025, recovering after a muted 2024. Within that figure, menswear is punching above its weight; the UK menswear market reached $20.6bn in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 4.84 per cent through to 2033. Tailoring, long written off by trend forecasters, is driving a meaningful share of that momentum, and the buying community is beginning to notice.

The casualisation story is more complicated

Here’s where it gets interesting for anyone managing a buying strategy. The casualisation of UK workwear is real and well-documented. In July 2025, Indeed’s Hiring Lab research found that 3.3 per cent of UK job postings referenced casual dress, a figure more than ten times higher than pre-pandemic levels. Marketing, media and personal care roles lead the way, while London, despite its corporate reputation, actually recorded the lowest share of casual dress job postings in the country at just 2.3 per cent.

But casualisation and formalwear demand aren’t mutually exclusive, and treating them as opposites is where retail strategy can go wrong. What’s actually happening is a split market: sectors like financial services, law and consulting are pulling firmly in one direction, while creative and tech industries pull in another. For retailers, that means two distinct product lanes with different price points, silhouettes and buying cycles.

The risk isn’t stocking the wrong thing; it’s treating tailoring as a single, monolithic category when the customer need is far more nuanced. A corporate procurement buyer has entirely different expectations to someone dressing for a wedding or a promotion interview, and a well-structured range can serve both.

The smartest retailers are already acting on this reality. M&S has publicly stated it views menswear as a significant growth avenue, actively working to attract younger male consumers and establish itself as a leader in men’s fashion. That kind of strategic intent, backed by hard sales figures, is a signal worth heeding.

What This Means for Your Strategy

If you’re in buying, merchandising or category planning, the tailoring resurgence raises some pointed questions about your current range architecture. Consider the following:

• Are your suit price points reflecting where real demand sits, or are you caught between value and premium without a clear proposition?
• Is your formal range updated for the hybrid-office customer, who wants a suit that works for a boardroom Tuesday and a wedding Saturday?
• Have you reviewed your supplier relationships to ensure lead times can respond to demand spikes as quickly as John Lewis and M&S have needed to?
• Are you targeting B2B channels, including corporate accounts, uniform suppliers and event companies, that are also benefiting from this trend?

IBISWorld forecasts UK clothing retailing revenue growing at a compound annual rate of 5.2%, but that growth won’t distribute evenly across categories. Retailers who reposition around formalwear, particularly in menswear, are better placed to capture a disproportionate share. Rising wage costs and elevated online return rates, averaging 30% across clothing, are squeezing margins sector-wide, which makes category focus and demand accuracy more important than ever.

The category you didn’t expect to lead

There is a certain irony in suits becoming one of the more reliable growth stories in an otherwise pressured retail environment. For years, the received wisdom was that tailoring was shrinking, casualisation was unstoppable and anyone investing in formal menswear was working against the grain. The current data suggests that wisdom was premature, and the retailers who held their nerve are now looking prescient.

The more useful question for your business now isn’t whether the suit is back. It clearly is. The question is whether your range, your supplier base and your in-store experience are genuinely set up to serve the customer who’s ready to buy one. Because if they’re not, someone else’s range will be.

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