To get a job, a nice suit can help. These are free
Le costume de l’emploi.
Un costume gratuit pour retrouver confiance en soi, et peut-être, décrocher un travail. C’est l’idée de l’association new-yorkaise « 100 suits for 100 men ». Créée en 2011 à New York, elle habille les demandeurs d’emploi des pieds à la tête. Veste, cravate, chaussures et conseils taillés sur mesure… Bienvenue à la « Male boutique ».
The community center at Redfern Houses was the last place Shareef Wise would have expected to lead him to his next job. Redfern, after all, was the place he was trying to escape. He had lived in the public housing complex in Far Rockaway, Queens, his entire life, in the same fourth-floor apartment he shared with his grandmother, older brother, older sister and younger brother. For the past month and a half, he had been searching for work in the hope of being able to move away so his 16-year-old brother could avoid the gang violence that had forced Wise, 22, out of school after 11th grade.
2. Wise hadn’t had any luck, and he thought he knew why: He didn’t have the right clothes for the job interviews. So when the man standing in front of the Redfern community center one recent Friday offered Wise a free suit, he didn’t believe him. “I didn’t think they were serious,” Wise recalled. “But they said, ‘Yeah, it’s free, everything is free, the whole suit, tie everything.’ So I’m like, ‘This is perfect.'”
3. Wise had a job interview the next day, for a ramp agent position at Kennedy International Airport, and another the following week. He and his friends had been walking by the community center, which for the day had been transformed into what the man called the Male Boutique. 4. The man was Kevin Livingston, 39, founder and president of 100 Suits for 100 Men, a nonprofit that aims to fit at-risk and formerly incarcerated people with business attire and, ideally, jobs. One of the organization’s newest projects is the Male Boutique, which provides styling and tailoring to men for whom such an experience is usually unimaginable.
‘LOOK AT YOUR BOY!’
5. “You’re sharp, bro,” Livingston said, as he watched Wise smooth out a black Calvin Klein suit jacket he had selected for himself. It would have cost between $100 and
$600 at Macy’s. “Woo! Look at your boy!” Wise said, snapping and dancing in place.
6. The organization, which Livingston conceived of in 2011 while working as a customer service representative at a bank, is still small and run entirely by volunteers. It doesn’t have the resources yet to recreate full Fifth Avenue swankiness. At the Male Boutique in Redfern, the suits, all donated, hung from a ceiling beam with flaking maroon paint; $80 wool ties were laid out on a collapsible plastic table. 7. But the group seems poised for growth, especially after a recent surge of highprofile attention. In February, Lu-Shawn Thompson donated $30,000 and two dozen suits that had belonged to her late husband, Ken Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney who became known for his efforts to reform the criminal justice system before he died of cancer last October. Then, in May, Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, contributed 50 suits.
NO THRIFT SHOP
8. The attention, and the donations that accompanied them, helped Livingston expand the boutique arm of 100 Suits. Previously, he had simply handed out suits, either at community events sponsored by other organizations, including gun buybacks, or at pop-up events he planned himself. But he wanted to create more personal interactions with the men — and to imbue those interactions with a sense of dignity. “I don’t want to become nobody’s thrift shop,” Livingston said. “I want the men to have an experience. To walk out with the clothes, encouraged.”
9. Upon entering, men are greeted by a “boutique stylist.” The stylist, a volunteer, helps the men select a shirt, tie, jacket, pants and shoes. If the fit isn’t perfect, the stylist can do some minor tailoring: a cuff here, a hem there. Then there’s a free haircut. At the end, the men sit down with a “men’s talk specialist,” who takes their contact information and promises to check in with community resources, mentorship and tips on how to clean their suits.
TIME TO GET A JOB
10. As [Wise] prepared to leave the boutique, Livingston gave [him] one more item: a wristwatch. A sly grin spread across Wise’s face as he raised his wrist into the air to admire the watch face. “It’s time to go get a job!”
11. It would turn out that, for all the groans immediately induced by Wise’s pun, he was not wrong. Wise was offered the job at the airport. The next week, he was offered the second job, too. He took both. He works the night shift for one, and the day shift for the other. He is also studying for his high school equivalency diploma. He hopes to go to college and become a police officer. He wants to move out of Redfern by next year, he said.
12. On a recent Wednesday, two weeks after he discovered the boutique, he wore the suit to lunch at Applebee’s. Two men approached him; they told him they owned a construction company. “They asked me if I wanted a job, like ‘I like how you dress, we need people like you,'” Wise recalled. He turned them down. After all, he said, “I got two jobs already.”