Alexandre F., former image consultant (and now a banker in London), gives us a particularly incisive and personal article on his vision of costume, in addition to being a tribute to English tailoring. Read without moderation to know (finally) how to wear a suit.
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Not very long ago I was in Savile Row for a little shopping trip, and on the phone with Benoît, whom I kept informed of my discoveries and with whom we discussed lapel width and notch height (this is the lapel of the jacket). And then the idea arose to write an article on costumes for BonneGueule. Or rather, Ben suggested it to me... and I immediately said yes, impatient to share with you a little of this knowledge dedicated to masculine elegance.
However, in front of my computer afterwards, it seems very difficult to cover the subject in an article. Competent people who have written entire books: to pretend to explain the costume to you from A to Z in a few Word pages would be ridiculous. So I started thinking about the biggest flaws that I noticed daily in 99% of men wearing a suit. So I'll give you some details and some opinions.
Preamble and "disclaimer" however: like many readers of this blog and members of its forum, I am passionate about fashion. But when it comes to suits, I couldn't care less about the latest trend, about the crazy thing about making notches too low or about the trick ambition to popularize the (hideous) 4-button jacket. A suit is all about proportions, construction/comfort, and colors. Elegance, unlike fashion, is timeless (or almost).
Avoid overly complicated assemblies (characters 2 and 5 starting from the left),
but take an example from the character of Campbell (middle).
Note: the shirt which makes an elegant reminder by extending beyond the sleeves of the suit.
Choosing the right suit size
I think this is the biggest fault I see in men when it comes to suits. 99.9% of the men I meet in Paris and London wear suits that are too big . A suit is not a disguise, it is not a cloth that you throw over your shoulders so as not to be cold and not to be yelled at by your boss. A suit serves to magnify your figure, to make you elegant.
By considering the thing as 99.9% of men do, that is to say as a piece of fabric that your company requires you to wear, you are already leaving the approach of elegance ("but I have none of it damn being elegant!" => well don't read on). The origin of this permanent and hideous oversizing doesn't matter to me (some think it comes from the power suits of the 80s)... the fact is that it's ridiculous.
Good length of jacket, good fit, perfect shoulders.
Pay attention to the shoulders (they structure the costume)
In a suit with sloping shoulders and fitted a light year from your height, you massacre your figure and are unmistakably reminiscent of the spotty teenager who borrowed his father's suit to go out. To forbid.
How to cure it ? The base is your shoulders. When trying on a suit, you must ensure that the shoulder seam, where it falls, coincides perfectly with the end of your shoulder. This means that the seam must be ON the fall of the shoulder and not above the gap located in its extension. Otherwise, you will fall into the pitfall defined above. And no, it's not "less comfortable" as most men claim. Nothing is more pleasant to wear than a canvas jacket that fits you. If clothing in your size is uncomfortable, there are three solutions:
1 - The garment is poorly cut.
2 - The garment is not cut for you.
3 - You have a weird body shape.
Even in a “sitting situation”, notice how the shoulders remain well defined.
Obviously, if you are still considering that a beautiful suit is a heat-sealed one for €650 at Hugo-Boss, taking it to your size will surely be less comfortable than wearing pajamas. But this is a matter of manufacturing.
Bending your suit
After the shoulders, a third point should be mentioned . This is bending.
You don't all have the same body shape, far from it. Add to this that not all suits are well cut (far from it either). You therefore find yourself with a plethora of combinations between shape and cut, the vast majority of which inevitably tend towards the mismatch between cut and shape... and therefore towards a ridiculous silhouette. A jacket can be your size at the shoulders and no longer look like anything past the first button, for this reason of morphology/cut suitability.
Some men, for example, have very wide hips. If they wear a jacket that is too tight at the waist, the jacket will suddenly widen at the beginning of the hips, cutting off the harmony of the silhouette and giving an unsightly "bumpy" effect to the pockets.
Others (like me) have a large shoulder width/waist ratio (in other words, a thin waist). For these people, taking a jacket with a loose fit will inexorably give the impression of floating in it, which is not very elegant... even if the jacket is their size at the shoulders.
There remains the solution of retouching, but recending (resuming the bending pliers) has the limitation that there will come a time when the jacket will "break" at the button and will provide an unsightly effect.
With a suit like this, you will appear sober in any situation.
Knowing and accepting your body shape and gradually starting to ask yourself these questions during fittings is something that is important for you to do if you want to stop looking like a bag on the way to work .
Which suit cut to choose?
On the question of cut and your choice, let's come to the offer. In my opinion, there are two types of houses. Those that inspire, and those that we copy. On Savile Row, most of the houses on the right-hand sidewalk entering from Vigo Street are the "old" houses, the youngest of which must be over a century old. A model with the sole obsession of masculine elegance, it is an experience and a know-how that is not found among... among our friends the designers. When you walk into Huntsman & Sons, you're dealing with people who know why their notch is this height, why their backhand is this width, and why the button is where it is. On the other side, people like Ozwald Boateng (this is just as interesting, but that's another story).
You are dealing with a fully canvassed suit, which in addition to being extremely (extremely) rare in PAP offers a difference in terms of movement of the garment and comfort that is light years away from heat-sealed. When you enter Hugo Boss to buy a suit, you see iron-on suits whose cut only makes sense to look like everyone else. I'm talking about Hugo Boss, but you can put almost all "designers" in the same bag.
As I said at the beginning of this article, a suit is a matter of proportions. Lapels that are too thin (or too wide), a bend that is too high, too low, too tight or not enough, a poorly positioned button, a jacket that is too long, pants with a dropped bottom, etc. are all details that change dramatically, but subtly, your silhouette. When it comes to costumes, as with many other things, popular belief is often a thousand miles from accuracy, or anything close to it.
So please, if you want a nice suit, go to someone who knows how to make them. For addresses, I'll let you consult the excellent Parisian Gentleman blog.
Stop wearing costumes that are too big: Joan is watching you!
Please the pretty redhead?
If you liked this article, do not hesitate to also reread the article on tailor-made suits in Paris .
