If you get out of your tech-bubble, you'll notice this as very far from the truth.
Suits are the work dress in consulting, financial services, pretty much anything where you're clients demand respect and are not in IT (IT and personal visual aestethics have an inverse relationship, in any big company you can easily tell who is in IT).
Try to attend a management meeting in Europe, China, Japan without a suit.
Within the suit world people from the US are also highly visible as the art of fashion seems to have been lost. While the rest of the world went with tighter forms, US men still wear balloon shaped trousers, as if the 80s never stopped. And the number one tell are the shoes. Italians shape the shoe world, pointy and long have been the way to go for some time now - but US men go in with big black round things, often not even polished properly. This goes up to CEO level.
There are certain elements of a push-back right now in the US as well, the first one being the success of the tv-series Mad Med which is a big advertisement for fashion and representative clothing. The second being a resurgence of elegant, masculine fashion - see blogs like the Sartorialist for a glimpse into that: http://www.thesartorialist.com/
A well-fitted suit does not signal money, it signals TASTE. Which is very hard to talk about in tech circles. Like looking at a well set up VIM instance, it tells you about the owner's habits.
> Try to attend a management meeting in Europe, China, Japan without a suit.
You don't even have to go as far as management meeting. In Japan, if you have any sort of white-collar job (with few exceptions in tech companies and research departments), you wear a suit.
Not sure Japan is the best example - suits there, as worn by the salarymen you're talking about, are hardly treated as fashion - they're worn with all the pride and enthusiasm of any other uniform, i.e. not much. Morning on the yamanote-sen is a sea of miserable-looking ill-fitting suits, all seemingly in the same two shades ("boring blue" and "grim grey"), lifeless translucent e-z-care shirts and $5 ties. I haven't had too much cause to wear suits in Japan but when I did a $1500 Hugo Boss and a decent shirt made me feel like frigging James Bond.
Not to say I didn't see nice suits, I saw plenty, just saying that your average sarariman sure isn't buying $4000 bespoke suits and frankly I would doubt $400.
Suits are the work dress in consulting, financial services, pretty much anything where you're clients demand respect and are not in IT (IT and personal visual aestethics have an inverse relationship, in any big company you can easily tell who is in IT).
Try to attend a management meeting in Europe, China, Japan without a suit.
Within the suit world people from the US are also highly visible as the art of fashion seems to have been lost. While the rest of the world went with tighter forms, US men still wear balloon shaped trousers, as if the 80s never stopped. And the number one tell are the shoes. Italians shape the shoe world, pointy and long have been the way to go for some time now - but US men go in with big black round things, often not even polished properly. This goes up to CEO level.
There are certain elements of a push-back right now in the US as well, the first one being the success of the tv-series Mad Med which is a big advertisement for fashion and representative clothing. The second being a resurgence of elegant, masculine fashion - see blogs like the Sartorialist for a glimpse into that: http://www.thesartorialist.com/
A well-fitted suit does not signal money, it signals TASTE. Which is very hard to talk about in tech circles. Like looking at a well set up VIM instance, it tells you about the owner's habits.