(FORTUNE Magazine) – One of the many sartorial hurdles facing today's moneyed executive is how to strike that perfect balance of understated elegance and bald ostentation. Monogrammed cuffs? Please. No, what's needed is something the venerable English fabric manufacturer Holland & Sherry calls "initial cloth": a wool-and-cashmere fabric with silk pinstripes woven into words. From afar, an initial-cloth suit looks like a plain old pinstriped suit. But up close you can read such (real) messages as THRIFTY CAR RENTAL; PUBLIX WHERE SHOPPING IS A PLEASURE; and PRESIDENT CARLOS MENEM. The company has had requests for yellow suits with blue letters, as well as pinstripes in hot pink and green. They've also made fabric with stripes in Greek and Arabic, and in shapes like a company logo and a cat. Holland & Sherry says the fabric sells particularly well in the southern U.S. Noted Southerner Evander Holyfield has four suits that read, respectively, EVANDER HOLYFIELD, THE CHAMP, THE CHAMP ONE MORE TIME, and THE THREE-TIME CHAMP. A car dealer in Tennessee bought one to wear in his TV ads, but when he found that the pinstriped message (STRAIGHT TALK, STRAIGHT FROM THE BOSS) wasn't visible to viewers at home, he ordered a second suit with letters a quarter-inch high. These suits don't come cheap: The car dealer's suit will set him back about $6,000; the fabric alone usually runs about $4,000 per suit. Holland & Sherry is now also getting into interior design. Call your decorator, and be first on your block with a sofa that says KEEP YOUR FEET OFF THE FURNITURE.

--Lauren Goldstein