Fit & Tailoring
Most people buy clothes off the rack and wear them exactly as they came. A tailor can fix the four things that make a garment look borrowed, usually for less than the price of a shirt.
Fit & Tailoring
Shoulders, chest, length, sleeve. In that order, and the first one decides whether the rest is worth discussing.
Shoes & Accessories
The difference between a shoe you resole for a decade and one you throw away in eighteen months is a single construction decision made in the factory, and it is visible if you know where to look.
Fit & Tailoring
Break is the fold the trouser makes where it meets the shoe. Getting it wrong is the fastest way to look like you have not thought about your clothes, and it is the cheapest thing to fix.
Shoes & Accessories
Leather is a skin. It dries out, cracks and fails, and the routine that prevents that takes about ten minutes a month.
Capsule Wardrobe
Smart casual, business casual, cocktail, black tie optional. The terms are used loosely and mean different things by country and context, but they are not infinitely elastic.
Shoes & Accessories
The formality ranking of men's shoes is one of the few genuinely consistent conventions in dress, and it is determined by lacing, toe shape, decoration and colour, in that order.
Shopping Smart
It goes over everything, it is seen more than anything else you own, and a good one lasts twenty years. It is also where the difference between wool blends and real wool is most consequential.
Fit & Tailoring
Waist size is the only number most people consider and the least informative. Rise determines comfort and proportion, and it cannot be altered.
Fit & Tailoring
Bespoke, made-to-measure and off-the-peg describe three genuinely different processes, and the terms are used interchangeably by people selling the cheaper one.
Shoes & Accessories
Nothing here is necessary, which is exactly why it registers. A tie choice and a scarf fold are among the few visible decisions left in most wardrobes.
Shoes & Accessories
A bag carried every day is subjected to more stress than any garment, fails at predictable points, and is bought almost entirely on appearance.
Fit & Tailoring
Fewer people wear suits daily, which has made the suit more conspicuous rather than less. Worn well it reads as deliberate; worn badly it reads as an obligation.
Fit & Tailoring
Before buying anything, most wardrobes contain several garments that are almost right. Here is what a tailor can do about each of the usual complaints, and roughly what it involves.
Shoes & Accessories
Length is one of four dimensions and the only one most people consider. Width, instep height and heel volume determine whether a shoe is comfortable, and none of them appear on the box.
Shoes & Accessories
Chelsea, chukka, derby, jodhpur, work. Each was designed for a specific job, and the design features that suited that job determine where they sit on the formality scale now.
Shoes & Accessories
Socks are the cheapest item in a wardrobe and among the most visible when seated. The conventions are simple and consistently broken in the same three ways.
Fit & Tailoring
The collar is the part of a shirt closest to the face and the part that determines how the shirt works with a tie and a jacket. There are perhaps six styles worth knowing.
Fit & Tailoring
Not everyone chooses what they wear. Where a uniform, a safety requirement or a strict dress code applies, the remaining variables are fit, condition and the small number of permitted choices.
