To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) · Suits on Screen

To Kill a Mockingbird: Atticus Finch and the dignity of a summer suit

Updated September 2026 · Sam’s Menswear editorial team

A tan-and-white striped seersucker three-piece suit in a shuttered room, the jacket on a wooden hanger, the waistcoat over a wooden chair with a straw Panama hat on the seat, round wire spectacles and a pocket watch on a side table — A summer three-piece, a Panama and a pair of spectacles. Authority, without a single expensive thing in sight.

There are films where the suit is a costume and films where the suit is the character. In To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch is a widowed small-town lawyer in 1930s Alabama, and his suit tells you who he is before he says a word: decent, careful, not rich, and not going to be hurried by anybody.

The suit

Atticus wears a light three-piece summer suit, most often described as a tan-and-white striped seersucker:

A single-breasted, two-button jacket with notch lapels.
A five-button waistcoat, worn in the Alabama heat because that is what a professional man did.
Plain trousers with belt loops.

Accounts of who made it differ. The Haspel family of New Orleans, whose name is almost synonymous with the seersucker suit, has long said it supplied one; Harper Lee remembered a white linen three-piece. The story she told of first seeing Peck in costume is the best thing ever said about a film suit: he reminded her so much of her father, pot belly and all, that she cried.

Why it works

It is appropriate, not impressive. Atticus is not the best-dressed man in Maycomb and does not try to be. His suit fits the heat, the job and the town. That restraint is what makes him trustworthy on screen, and it is what makes a man trustworthy in a real courtroom too. The lawyer’s suit makes the same point about reading the room.

The cloth is right for the weather. Seersucker is woven so that some threads lie flat and others pucker, which holds the cloth slightly off the skin and lets air through. It is a hot-weather cloth that was meant to look crinkled.

It is worn properly. Jacket buttoned when he stands, waistcoat done up, tie in place. In the scenes that matter, the correctness of how he is dressed is part of the argument he is making.

What to take from it

Dress for the room, not for the photograph. The right suit for a situation is often plainer than the best suit you own.
Summer cloth is not a compromise. Seersucker, linen and open wools are how a man stays formal in a humid July. The patio suit covers the Toronto version.
Crinkle is allowed. Seersucker and linen are supposed to look lived-in. Do not fight them with a hot iron; care by cloth explains how to keep them.

Getting it made

Sam makes summer suits at the Vaughan studio in three to four weeks. The Drawing Board has no seersucker yet, so sketch the idea in tan linen: draw the Atticus three-piece. For the real cloth, bring the idea to the first appointment and look at the swatches in daylight.

Where the details come from: BAMF Style and Black Lapel.