{"id":108449,"date":"2026-01-02T14:32:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T14:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/108449\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T14:32:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T14:32:32","slug":"suits-the-clothes-make-the-man-25-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/108449\/","title":{"rendered":"Suits: The Clothes Make The Man 25 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s\u00a0been 25 years since the release of\u00a0SUITS: The Clothes Make the Man.\u00a0The film follows the Houston based conceptual art duo The Art Guys<\/a> as they traveled around the country for their project of the same name.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

To celebrate the\u00a0anniversary\u00a0the film will be shown at the historic River Oaks Theatre<\/a> on Tuesday, January 6 with a handful of\u00a0special events\u00a0surrounding the screening. There will be music by violin master Fiddle Witch prior to the film along with special screenings of two\u00a0additional\u00a0Houston centered short films.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The event will present Houston a Love Letter in Black & White by Cooper\u00a0Sukaly, a short black and white film which romantically highlights some of Houston\u2019s most notable spots and sometimes grungy imagery associated with our city.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

They will also be screening the short film, David Best: TEMPLE by Jon Conner, a film documenting the 2024 project housed at The Orange Show<\/a> by world renowned sculpture David Best<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Attendees are encouraged to wear suits to match the theme of the project and director W. Ross Wells along with producer Merideth Melville with be in attendance and part of the Q&A after the film. <\/p>\n

In\u00a0SUITS: The Clothes Make the Man, Jack Massing and Michael Galbreth brought to fruition their idea to turn themselves into walking billboards leasing advertising space on their\u00a0custom made\u00a0Todd Oldham suits.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The film follows the two as they\u00a0cold\u00a0call companies to sell them on their idea and then travel the country to\u00a0showcase\u00a0their idea on local shows, sidewalks, airports and even the statue of liberty culminating into a New York Fashion show ending the entire project.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the 25th anniversary and a lot of people that I\u00a0know that\u00a0are younger\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0really know much about what we did as The Art Guys,\u201d explains\u00a0Massing\u00a0who currently is the executive director of the Orange Show Center\u00a0For\u00a0Visionary Arts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u00a0kind of have\u00a0an idea of stuff we did but this documentary is part of the SUITS project which was a major project. It took us almost four years to do it from beginning to end. We were wearing the suits for a solid year, that was a big part of it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Massing and Galbreth worked together as The Art Guys for over 35 years until Galbreth passed away in 2019. The two were constantly finding ways to merge art, humor,\u00a0satire\u00a0and mixed media making them legends in the Houston art world and beyond.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s event is a perfect way to celebrate not only what The Art Guys\u00a0created\u00a0but the many wonderful things Houston has to offer. \u201cIt is,\u201d Massing\u00a0agrees\u00a0adding, \u201cAnd it shows how we are all connected and tied\u00a0together\u00a0especially through time. With The Art Guys we were so busy for so many years here, it only makes sense for me to tie those things together and to express Houston on\u00a0different levels\u00a0in\u00a0different ways.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Art Guys were constantly finding ways to collaborate not only with one another but with the entire city.\u00a0\u00a0For their SUITS project, they took it all to another level. \u201cIt shows how much impact one person can make just being here and helping out and being cognizant of community and civic pride will garner a lot of great assets to the whole town.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The idea for SUITS came from Massing watching a New Year\u2019s Eve football game and really paying attention to the many levels of advertising used in these games, not only with televised commercials but the stadiums themselves often named after products or companies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just absurd,\u201d says Massing. \u201cWhy can\u2019t you just focus on what\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0doing instead of trying to monetize everything?\u00a0So\u00a0we decided to monetize ourselves.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

They ended up with 56 different company logos on their suits, which are now housed in the MFAH<\/a> along with the complete archives of planning and creating SUITS. In the film, you can see how the two artists\u00a0would cold\u00a0call these companies sometimes leading to success and other times radio silence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to think about getting to the right person at a\u00a0company\u00a0especially if you\u2019re\u00a0doing\u00a0a cold call,\u201d says Massing.\u00a0\u00a0He recalls how right away when calling Krispy Kreme\u00a0donuts\u00a0he was met by someone who just got it right\u00a0away\u00a0and he\u00a0immediately\u00a0landed the deal.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was also through their advertising space from publisher Harry N. Abrams that the project was turned into a beautifully crafted book of the same name. Massing laughs as he remembers their friend Ann Richards calling from the private plane of August Busch, securing them a\u00a0suit\u00a0space for Budweiser.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

To pull this all off and be a walking billboard, Massing and Galbreth had to play the part and walked the world as their stage demanding attention from others everywhere they went, a non characteristic trait for the two artists.\u00a0\u00a0The film shows strangers\u00a0greet\u00a0them with excitement and others with skepticism.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were playing the part but\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0what a lot of theater and a lot of\u00a0performance\u00a0and a lot of fame and fashion and all that stuff is. The very\u00a0well known\u00a0or famous people that I know all struggle with the fact that they\u00a0have to\u00a0act famous. They\u00a0have to\u00a0fulfill that role and not everybody is really that good at it and some people are too good at it,\u201d says Massing with a laugh.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When asked how the project would be perceived today in a world where everyone\u00a0seems to know\u00a0everything and is constantly\u00a0fed\u00a0images of\u00a0advertising\u00a0he says, \u201cIt would land differently today. I think it would be less perplexing to people because they would already be up to speed on what was going on.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When they filmed the project in 1997, no one knew what they were up to unless they asked the two or happened to have caught one of their many media appearances. \u201cI think they\u00a0were just perplexed. When you see something that\u00a0you\u2019ve\u00a0never seen before, it disrupts the patterns that\u00a0you\u2019ve\u00a0developed\u00a0mentally,\u00a0and you\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0really see it until you see it enough then you can understand it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Massing adds, \u201cWhat\u2019s\u00a0really important\u00a0about art oftentimes is that it is of its time and when art is of its time it seems to work better than if it tries to be futuristic or looking back at the past.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Watching\u00a0the film takes the audience on a sort of passenger seat ride with the artists and really shows how an idea can become a reality and how artists and their audience can interact directly, even when the audience is unaware of their role in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat artists do is come up with something and then endeavor to make it perfect or finished or make it great and then to show it you. You have to have an audience with anything you do. You can do things all by itself alone somewhere but there\u2019s a dialog between audience artist and critic that are super important.\u201d<\/p>\n

SUITS: The Clothes Make the Man will be shown on Tuesday, January 6 at The River Oaks Theatre. For more information, visit theriveroakstheatre.com.<\/p>\n

For more information on The Art Guys visit theartguys.com. <\/p>\n

This article appears in Private: Jan 1 \u2013 Dec 31, 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s\u00a0been 25 years since the release of\u00a0SUITS: The Clothes Make the Man.\u00a0The film follows the Houston based conceptual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[226,56,58,57,48745,48746,1719,48747,48748],"class_list":{"0":"post-108449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-homepage","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news","12":"tag-jack-massing","13":"tag-michael-galbreth","14":"tag-river-oaks-theatre","15":"tag-suits-the-clothes-make-the-man","16":"tag-the-art-guys"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}