Everlane Italian wool suit jacket

$198, Buy now at Everlane

Everlane Italian wool trouser

$98, Buy now at Everlane

Buying your first suit—or even just your first suit in a while—can be complicated. Panic-inducing, even. Which is why Everlane, fresh off breaking into the finicky world of sneakers, are bringing their streamlined, direct-to-consumer vision to the even finickier world of men’s tailoring. The elevator pitch for their new signature suiting line, which just dropped today, is a familiar one: it’s a suit for guys who don’t really wear suits, the standby they can dust off for the occasional wedding or job interview that pops up on their calendar. It’s a lane that everyone from J.Crew (who last year launched an unstructured version of their hit Ludlow suit they call “the Un-suit”) to Saturdays NYC (the cool-kid swimsuit brand that started hawking suit-suits in 2017) has been trying to occupy for a minute now. Everlane’s entrant is a worthy challenger—and might actually offer the best bang-for-your-buck of ‘em all, depending on your needs.

Clocking in at a super-reasonable $300, the suit is fashioned from a lightweight, Italian-milled wool, with the slightest hint of stretchy elastane in the mix for comfort and wrinkle resistance. (The lining is a distinctly cheap-feeling polyester, but it’s 100% recycled which is nice, and no one’s really going to be judging the inside of your suit, anyway.) The silhouette, from the lapels right down to the fit of the pants, is maybe a bit slimmer than we’d generally go for these days—but, overall, it’s a clean and sharply-cut suit that won’t ever really look out of style. It won’t stand out, that is, for the right or wrong reasons. If you really do only wear a suit once or twice a year at most, and you’re just looking for a year-round navy or gray number that you can rely on, this is a good option: a little cheaper and more seasonless than what you’d get at J.Crew; a step up in quality from anything you’d find at H&M and the like.

One last thing: one curious selling point for this suit is that it is machine washable. We tried it out, and sure, it came out of the washer looking mostly fine—albeit in desperate need of a good steam. But, you guys, if there’s anything you take away from this article, let it be this: don’t machine wash your suits. They don’t need to be washed more than once a year at most, and when they do, it’s best left to professionals. Trust us. Buy this suit if you want, but for the love of god, bring it to a dry cleaner.

Everlane Italian wool suit jacket $198 Everlane Buy Now