Last week, certain members of the Senate were shocked (SHOCKED!) to see a person dressing in common clothes.

The tirades and jokes both wrote themselves.

This, naturally, led to a reversal of the reform. Suits are back. And all who are deeply affected by seeing a gentleman’s knees can finally breathe easy.

Lost in the vitriol and gut-rumbling confusion was a remarkably simple truth: suits were common. Common in culture and in affect. They were specifically not only the uniform of the professional but of the commoner.

The suit, that thing we associate with professionalism and elevated status: that thing is actually the jeans and t-shirt of history.

Changing priorities

Even as people harp on the need to elevate offices and “be taken seriously” through the costume of the tailored suit (”suit up!”), we are mixing our sense of relationship in the process.

It isn’t that the suit is not the uniform of professionals, it is that it was a uniform all men held in common, including professionals. It didn’t elevate the commoner, either. It was the uniform everyone wore. Because the wealthy used coats and hats to distinguish their class, not their profession.

In short, professionals wore common clothes—the need to distinguish was a class thing.

A similar concept fits in with clergy dress. Those priests who wore suits, did so to be common, not professional.

Many favored the common “Mister” to the elevated “Father”. This, too, was rebellion against the preferred dress for clergy: the Cassock. A look that intentionally set priests apart from the commons. The suit was a way of making us common.

Betrayal of the Common

The great suit debate of 2023 reflects a fascinating rhetorical turn. Calling suits a hallmark of today’s professional is a modern development. And this is happening at the same time that common dress has dramatically turned away from the suit.

In short, we are accepting one reform and calling it traditional while rejecting the common reform because it reforms.

The modern desire to elevate is itself a reform of the reform to the common.

And it shows just how much we’ve lost the depth of the word, common.

All of this is revealing our present views on the common itself. Generations raised on individual expression and political movements determined to eliminate the commons make this rhetorical turn seem inevitable.

Precisely as the relationship of what is common to what we hold in common is inseparable. When we recognize our commonness, we are likely to preserve what we share in common, ie. the commons.

The victim of this reform is us.

The elevation of professionals comes at the expense of the common. Just as the elevation of powerful individuals comes at the expense of the commons.

People who want each of us to buy books are trying to eliminate libraries. The same who would pay for their kids’ private schools are trying to eliminate public schools. Just as they buy their own land and have us sell off our parks.

Common, the modern punchline, is our power.

We hold things in common. Care about things in common. Our common responsibility is salvific—precisely as individual (ir)responsibility is our doom.

I was taught to be uncommon. Which may as well have meant antisocial.

Be common. Serve people. Live with joy. And share in the delights and burdens of this wonderful life. Because selfishness and slavishly elevated attitudes are deeply unprofessional.