He Fa on David Byrne

A light-gray suit stretches the shoulders into an overbroad horizontal line; chest, belly and trouser legs gain far more volume than this face requires. The outfit associated with David Byrne still has lapels, cuffs and a shirt, with no familiar structure missing. This is precisely what clarifies the question: recognizing a suit does not mean already knowing how it should fit a person. The head looks small, as though temporarily placed atop a large institution. Correcting it to customary proportions would most directly mean cutting the jacket narrower. But one can also ask the reverse: why must a small head be wrong, and why can clothing not openly expose how much larger than the body it is? Excessive dimensions turn standards ordinarily treated as natural back into choices open to discussion.

Wide sleeves and long trousers carry that choice toward hands and feet. They must address the points where the body emerges, rather than declare freedom only at the shoulder line. I am willing to imagine a concrete alteration: keep the giant outline, while letting the cuffs clearly find the hands and the hems avoid obstructing the shoes' contact with the ground. Exaggeration need not be flattened away, but use should not keep paying compensation for it.

Standard sizes do have practical benefits: they ease making, replacement and shared recognition. I will not infer from this comic suit that all professional clothing oppresses bodies. What needs changing is the standard's position. It can help start a fitting, but cannot, after a wearer reports discomfort, keep insisting the problem lies solely in a body that failed to grow correctly.

I leave He Fa's calm face above the enormous gray shoulders, neither rushing to grow nor immediately shrinking the jacket. The agreement of fit can still be sewn again. If clothing is willing to adjust to movement, a body can also accept certain meaningful limits. Negotiation's worst outcome is for one side already to be constricted while the other claims that sizing has never been disputed.