Men are not interested in the clothing of celebrities. At the most, the endorsement of a film star, a magazine or a fashion brand is a shortcut, a sanction. A man’s number one priority is not looking stupid, and popular culture is a safety blanket.
In my experience, knowledge is what really engages a man. Tell him why his suit is better made than his friend’s. Tell him why dry cleaning is shortening the life of his shirts. Tell him why this particular leather jacket will look much better the worse it is treated – all it needs is some wax once a year.
But information can be hard to come by, or is covered in an off-putting sheen of fashion and femininity. Here we dissect items of menswear, taking a small step towards correcting that. We begin with suits.
The easiest way to identify a well-made suit is the canvas. This is the lining that runs down the front of the jacket and gives it structure. It’s why the front feels different to the back. The canvas can be sewn in, so it can move with you and your movements, or glued.
Glue is cheaper and easier, but means the jacket will remain stiff and impersonal. Canvas adopts the shape of your body. It gives a natural roll to the front of the jacket and its lapels. You can always spot a glued or fused jacket because the lapels are flat and lifeless – over time the points will stand away from the jacket, such is their artificial stiffness. Cheap, high-street suits are fused.
Any good suit will have floating canvas in at least the top half of the jacket – from Austin Reed to Gieves & Hawkes to Canali. It is the minimum standard you should expect.
You can feel the canvas if you separate the cloth somewhere in the chest of the jacket, pinching the inside and the outside material and feeling for an extra, loose layer between the two.
Some suits have canvas all the way down the jacket, which creates greater structure but also weight, and is therefore not generally preferred by the Italian producers. Not surprisingly, the ready-made suits offered by Savile Row tailors such as Richard Anderson and Huntsman are fully canvassed. The chests of their jackets also have a layer of horsehair and felt, but that’s not easy to identify from the outside.
The other sign of quality is hand stitching, which is most needed on the parts of the jacket that have to be flexible, such as the collar and armhole. Canali and Ralph Lauren use handwork, for example. It’s easy to spot this: just turn up the collar and look at the stitches that attach it to the back of the jacket. If they are at all irregular, it is hand sewn.
On the other hand, look out for extraneous details that mimic hand stitching. Tiny stitches up the edge of a lapel, known as pick stitching, used to be a sign of quality. Now it is often reproduced by machine to try to give the impression of a handmade suit. Not only does that kind of fakery undermine a suit’s style, but it gives you a pretty good idea of the company’s manufacturing priorities.
My other tips are fairly intuitive. I recommend avoiding an extremely lightweight cloth: it won’t last that long. The same goes for a shiny cloth: it looks cheap and will only look cheaper. And if you’re going to wear the suit regularly, invest in two pairs of trousers. It seems expensive until you realise the alternative is a second suit.
Simon,
Top of the morning to you. My name is Benjamin Foley and I recently started working for a “modern bespoke” company by the name of Knot Standard. Prior to my beginning here, I worked in finance.
I am sure you are extremely busy, but I have been voraciously reading your blog for tips and advice on how to understand the world of bespoke menswear. Therefore, I wanted to reach out to see if you would be so kind as to give some advice on how to accelerate my learning of the industry (mills, textiles, measurement/fit, etc.). I understand you are very busy and probably get a lot of emails like this, so I understand if you are unable to reply, but I have listed a couple questions below that would be extremely helpful.
What book would you recommend to a man just beginning his journey in the bespoke world, but who wants to be immersed in the industry? (I have read Style and the Man by Alab Flusser – Looking to learn about the industry not just how to dress myself)
Are there any designers/tailors that were able to become masters of their craft later in life or at a faster pace than most?
Thank you so much for all of the work you do and I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Ben
Dear Simon,
Where is the best place to place the ubiquitous mobile phone inside a suit jacket?
I am about to have my third suit made by a Savile Row tailor.
I asked for a mobile phone pocket in the first two, my cutter even took a tracing of my phone to have the right dimension, but when the suits arrived — no phone pocket.
I would like to get this right the third time.
The jacket will be DB, and I wonder if it is better to have the somewhat heavy phone place high on the chest, midship, low, or whatever.
What have you found?
In the chest is usually the best place – it has the most support. Ideally high up so it doesn’t run into the waist of the jacket, and with the pocket a little shallower and narrower than normal, so the phone is reachable and doesn’t fall over sideways.
Ticket pockets can also work well, as well as change pockets in your hip pockets. Again, need to make sure they are low enough not to interfere with the waist however