And why a royal blue suit is a great alternative to navy.
Let’s be honest. When it comes to blue suits, there are a lot of choices. Navy blue. Cobalt blue. Air Force blue. Light blue. Want me to keep going?
Even when you’re talking about a classic navy blue suit there are any number of gradations in color tone — dark navy, mid-navy, light navy — as well as options for subtle patterns to make it stand out from the pack.
Yet even with all of those choices in that classic navy blue suit conversation, some guys, especially those who might be considering their very first blue suit, don’t want navy. That was certainly me and I’ll explain why in just a bit — it’ll probably sound familiar to you.
Enter the royal blue suit.
It’s a classic suit for the modern man. And in this post we’ll discuss the differences between a royal blue suit and a navy blue suit and talk about why you might choose a royal blue suit (I’ll share my story). I’ll also break down my styling in this post and we’ll take a closer look at the suit itself.
Let’s dive in.
Royal Blue Suit vs. Navy Blue Suit
I’d like to start off by taking a quick moment to compare a royal blue suit to a navy blue suit. There are some differences — some obvious, some not so obvious — that, when laid out, can help inform any decision you decide to make.
- Color Intensity: Royal blue is a brighter and more vivid shade of blue, whereas navy blue is darker and more subdued.
- Visual Impact: As a result of that more vivid color tone, a royal blue suit will tend to stand out more and make a slightly bolder statement than a navy blue suit, the latter certainly being more traditional and conservative.
- Occasions: Because of its bolder and slightly statement-making quality, royal blue suits are often worn for more festive events, while a navy blue suit might be more commonly worn in a more formal or business setting.
- Versatility: Any way you slice it, a navy blue suit is going to be more versatile and easier to pair with a wider variety of shirt and tie combinations. Also, if made with the right fabric, you can easily break a navy blue suit into separates. Although I’d still consider a royal blue suit to be versatile, it doesn’t match that of a navy blue suit.
- Perception: Navy blue is generally perceived as more authoritative, professional, and conservative. Royal blue, more modern and stylish.
However, one of the reasons I personally like a royal blue suit is that it’s got that statement quality but on an extremely subtle level. It’s not flashy, in your face, or flamboyant, but has that little something extra that makes you say, “hmmm, that’s a cool suit.”
It’s classic with a modern sensibility, which is how I’ve always defined my personal style.
Why Choose A Royal Blue Suit?
To help answer the question of why you might choose a royal blue suit, I think it would be helpful and possibly illuminating to hear a bit of my personal story from the beginning of my style journey.
It was at the very end of 2012 when I decided that I was finally going to make the commitment to dressing well and building a classic and versatile menswear wardrobe. I’d just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs and became sort of fascinated with the idea of doing more with less in terms of clothing.
I didn’t necessarily want to do the uniform thing like Steve Jobs did so famously — though that did fuel one of the more interesting sartorial experiments I’ve ever undertaken — but I thought that by building a thoughtful and well-curated classic wardrobe, that I’d be able to get the most out of the money I planned to spend.
Makes sense, right?
However, there was one issue I was wrestling with internally. I knew that I wanted to build a “classic” menswear wardrobe, but I didn’t want it to be “boring.” Not that there’s anything with “boring” style, as I’ve recently opined.
But this was a bit of a different era and I was just cutting my teeth on classic menswear. I wasn’t into Fashion but I wanted to be somewhat unique without falling into the trap that so many do when first starting out and making that most awful of men’s style mistakes. Well, I did end up doing a bit of that myself — nobody’s immune — but to borrow an extremely overused phrase during that era, I was basically looking to do something that was “classic with a twist.”
It’s easy to roll our collective eyes at that now but the spirit was that I wanted to dress in a classic way but put my own personal stamp on it. And by “personal stamp” I didn’t mean a contrasting color button hole, silly suit jacket lining, or “funky” socks.
No, it had to be much more subtle than that — a reflection of my personality and who I am authentically.
