Why Women Don't Rule the World

I’m going to need a new suit for business school (and later) job interviews. My only suit is from my senior year of college when I was frankly, a bit of a porker, left over from rowing crew and excessive amounts of beer-drinking. Now that I’m marginally svelter, I couldn’t keep the thing up with a belt. So, I started doing research on how much I can expect to spend, and I ran across this bit by Laura Solon, a UK writer from the Guardian and she is just irresistible. Am now convinced that I should raise my children in London, so that they will be just as witty and charming:

Why don't women rule the world? Is it because we live in a patriarchal society that forever perpetuates the glass ceiling? Is it because women don't support successful women? I think it's both, but I tell you what doesn't help women in their cause: women's suits. Hillary Clinton's peach trouser suit. Deborah Meaden's beige number from the Dragons' Den promos. All the ones worn by women in the government. They are awful. Really awful. They are so awful that they could be a contestant on The Apprentice, where they'd annoy Margaret so much she'd swear.

The law of women's suits is: it doesn't matter how much a woman spends on a suit, she will almost always end up looking as if she bought it from a Next Seconds shop where it was nestling on a rail between a chenille turtle-neck and a plus-sized taupe thong.
The only way to wear a suit is if a) it's Chanel and b) you're a Parisian woman who weighs six ounces and sleeps safe in the knowledge that if global warming continues and lions start living in France and she's chased by one, she could save herself by hiding in the gap between her fridge freezer and the wall.

Maybe one day I will care about the brand name of my suit. I am going to business school in the next few years, and despite my thoughts on the matter, maybe I *will* lose my soul after all, and become the kind of person who has a comment on the suiting collections at Bergdorf vs. Saks. My actual price-hunting revealed I should probably budget around $400 at least. My two winners:

J.Crew $460 = $225 jacket + $130 pant + $100 pencil skirt
Bannana Republic $400 = $200 jacket + $100 pant + $80-100 pencil skirt

A quick search of Nordstroms.com revealed lots of Solon-described numbers and Bloomingdales.com revealed some sharp Theory and DVF looks that were way out of my price range ($800), and Chanel is just not an option. Any other ideas for finding a great looking suit under $500?

Also, a bit later in the article, Solon talks about her lack of financial knowledge and proposes:

scrapping sex education - just force all teenagers, boys and girls, to wear women's suits and thoughts of sex will all but disappear - and then replace it with finance education.

Cheers to that!