The three-piece suit is one of Napolean Bonaparte's lesser-known fingerprints on history. Indeed, though the modern sartorial persuasions of the upper class are decidedly lacking in 19th-century epaulets and ornate blades, men's fashion has always had a curious relationship to war-waging.
It is a little-known fact that Artemis' taste in dress was not natural-born, but instead cultivated, and rather clumsily so. Although he'd never been permitted the informality of clothing like jeans and t-shirts, as a youth, neither had Artemis found much interest in formal attire. There had been no reason, ultimately. He had a dim awareness of fashion's function for families like his; the use of certain styles and brands could distinguish the rare parvenu in upper-class circles from those who, proud, could trace their roots into antiquity — and all before a single word was exchanged. For something so rooted in aesthetics, fashion was, in Artemis' eyes, largely utilitarian. On the whole, it bored him.
While he'd been born into the sort of family that came with a set of expectations regarding aesthetic appreciation, Artemis had never had to feign interest in operas or art galas. His opinions on fine art were detailed beyond the vague, polite regard required by his social station. However, to ask him the difference between a Canali and a Zegna would be like asking him to extol the virtues of saying "pardon" rather than "excuse me". For the modern gentry, fashion was an exercise in phatic aesthetics; it served a necessary social role but held little content beyond that. Thus, the few suits from Artemis' youth were donned only when his father wished for the Fowls to be seen in full regalia at some social function or another.
Artemis purchased a suit by himself for the first time in his young life the week after the Fowl Star sank below the frigid waters of the Murmansk Fjord.
To his eternal shame, it had been an Armani.
He'd not known it, but clothing served to communicate more than one's relationships; it also communicated a lack thereof. Armani suits are well-made — the fashion house could hardly charge the exorbitant prices they did were they not. At the age of ten, Artemis had awkwardly assumed the mantle of the Fowl name, and he'd hoped that he could hide his age and lack of experience behind the uniform of bespoke garments. He would not shy away from the world that had readily consumed his father.
Artemis could not have known that his appearance belied every last one of those hopes. Perhaps it would have been easier if he had not known the other unspoken rules of his social station, but unfortunately, if you took Artemis apart atom-by-atom, somewhere between the quarks and the electrons, his essence would still sing with the knowledge of the order in which one is supposed to use the cutlery during dinners. People looked at how Artemis carried himself and saw old money. They looked at what he wore, and they saw that something was missing. Clothing as mainstream as Armani would have been gauche regardless, but the brand had the audacity to look modern even when imitating the classic styles. Even tailoring did not a bespoke suit make.
No amount of political maneuvering and damage control could change the fact that, with the right eye, a mere glance at the Fowl heir was enough to tell that he was the sole heir, and in fact, likely the sole Fowl left. And although it took a few fruitless meetings with Butler's contacts during the hunt for information on Fowl Sr., Artemis, too, began to realize something was remiss. Though his youth was undoubtedly an obstacle to overcome in business, his recent setbacks went beyond the expected surprise of being invited to engage in talks with Artemis Fowl, only to see the adolescent bearing the name rather than the grown man. No, dismissiveness had not been the primary concern in Artemis' growing pile of failed ploys. The problem, Artemis had realized with mounting bitterness, was the disrespect.
Slowly, he realized how he looked in the eyes of others. His confidence instead appeared to be insouciance. His coldness read as timidity. Determination, worst of all, became desperation. He must have seemed like the perfect mark — driven by need into the world of thieves, yet unacculturated, and thus likely to be suggestible. Or so thought the men who'd had the unique misfortune of crossing Artemis during the years Butler's strength was at its peak, and the duo had few, if any, compunctions about providing a demonstration of such.
The months that turned into years of meager progress wore down upon the young boy. His skin practically itched with the knowledge that there was some unknown piece of him that betrayed him to those he met. He wasn't sure if it was in how he held himself. Perhaps it was grief itself, wreathed cloyingly around him even during the business that took him far away from the manor, far away from the oppressive sorrows that threatened to collapse his mother's room down around her.
Artemis didn't know what was wrong about him. Neither did his mother, locked away within herself, nor his bodyguard, trained moreso in the art of enacting blunt, efficient cruelties than in the petty minutiae of the haute monde.
Painstakingly slow as it was, he did learn, however. Bit by bit, Artemis learned the steps in the aesthetic dance he needed to know.
He retired the loafers, electing instead to go with the timelessness of oxfords.
Sprezzatura style was so terribly American .
He disposed of the Armani, and only spared the Zegna for sentimental reasons.
Voguishness communicates only itself .
He'd made discreet calls to old family friends, and he finally stumbled upon a tailor that could fit him for a bespoke suit while not leaving a too keenly felt dent on the Fowl fortune.
The rare instances when Artemis found himself dreaming, he imagined himself, striding down South Anne Street with his father. His father would swing open the shop door of one of the assorted tailors, clapping his son proudly on the back with the other hand. The tailor would look up from his bookkeeping, peering over the edge of his half-moon bifocals.
"Can I help you, sir?" he'd query, and Artemis' father would chuckle, more jovial than Artemis remembered.
"No, dear boy," he'd wave him off. "I'm here for my son's first fitting."
Then, his voice would lower to an almost conspiratorial tone. "Wouldn't you know it, he's almost a man."
Artemis had woken from this dream a few times at Saint Bartleby's, dumb shock sending his fingers fumbling at the sheets in his darkened dorm. In numb, distant curiosity, he'd once allowed his hand to travel to his face.
The cool wetness on his cheeks had sent a roiling wave of shame through him, so intense it was almost violent.
Little by little, Artemis grew up, leaving behind the awkward young boy who tried to hide those facts with even more awkward, even more clearly jejune fashion choices. When his father was rescued from the icy depths of the Barents Sea, Artemis barely had time to realize that a part of himself had fought and perished to allow him to stand triumphant in the early dawn of Helsinki Hospital. The soft blues of the hospital gown made his father look almost a decade younger, and the narcotic-induced slumber smoothed out many of the worry lines on the patriarch's face, exacerbating the aforementioned effect.
It would be hours before his father awoke, Artemis decided, settling into the uncomfortable chair stationed by the hospital bed. He allowed himself to relax slightly, tension seeping away as he watched the steady readings on his father's health monitors.
Idly, Artemis wondered if his tailor had ever been asked to modify a suit around a prosthetic leg before.
Perhaps, Artemis thought carefully, the half-formed idea carrying with it emotions he refused to examine. Perhaps he'd call up the tailor that a classmate had mentioned visiting when he'd been fitted for his Confirmation suit. Although the streets of Dublin could be difficult to traverse even in good health, the results produced by South Anne Street tailors were unparalleled.
For a strange moment, Artemis started, sure that the thought was easily readable on his face.
The machines next to the hospital bed continued to beep dutifully. Embarrassed, Artemis squashed the odd feeling, settling back down into the chair. In the greyish-blue light that preceded the warm hues of dawn, his cufflinks glinted, the honey-toned metal twice as shiny as polished gunmetal.
AN:
Inspired largely by the following quote from book 6:
"[Butler] glanced across at Artemis and was surprised to see him dressed in one of his two suits, the dark blue one he had worn recently to the opera in Covent Garden. Artemis had always been a neat dresser, but a suit and tie were unusual even for him.
'Are we going somewhere formal, Artemis?'
'Nowhere formal,' said Artemis, with a coldness in his tone that the bodyguard had not heard before but would come to know well. 'Just business. I am in charge of the family affairs now, and so I should dress accordingly.'
tl;dr: Colfer writes Artemis wearing Armani and loafers and Zegnas and just... that's not how old money families dress lol.
However, I decided to give an in-universe explanation regarding these Bad fashion choices; I think an interesting take on why Artemis (at least when he was younger) dressed formally in ways that are… off for the kind of family the Fowls were — e.g. loafers, flashy fashion brands like Armani, etc — was that it connected to him trying (and struggling) to fill the role his father played in the family. One could argue this was a child sans father figure's attempt at acculturating into old money aristocratic mores. As he didn't have Fowl Sr. around to impart the unspoken "rules" of how these families discretely signal class, Artemis' subtle faux pas could be read as symbolic of him awkwardly trying to don the appearance of the adult world despite still fundamentally being a child.
Source: dude just trust me
(jk, I have a soft spot for old-fashioned men's formal wear, and I've picked up a lot of the weird, unspoken rules mentioned here when on like, the extremely toxic + neurotic forums that point to where you can pick up some thrifted/secondhand suit that somebody decided to hawk when their granddad passed)