The newest incarnation comes largely from the long love affair of the Paris designer Jean-Paul Gaultier with the chalk-stripe suit.

Apparently he was too impatient to wait for the fashion world and the avalanche of chalk-stripe suits due this fall.

He was rotund and elderly, with a chalk-stripe suit and silver watch-chain.

She juxtaposed a traditionally constructed chalk-stripe suit with a deconstructed one that had tubular, seamless trousers and a jacket with gently sloping shoulders.

I wore the chalk-stripe suit.

On a recent afternoon, he wore a chalk-stripe double-breasted suit of supple unlined wool with a bold black, gray and white plaid shirt.

He was dressed in the suitably subdued chalk-stripe suit of the upscale show biz attorney he was.

He wore "a chalk-stripe suit and a derby hat."

The chalk-stripe suit worn by men and women at the Ralph Lauren runway show in Bryant Park provided the week's strongest visual statement by an audience.

If it does, consumers will have an unusually fine array of choices, among them the chalk-stripe suits (with cuffs!)