Fit & Tailoring
How a jacket should fit, starting with the only part you cannot change
Shoulders, chest, length, sleeve. In that order, and the first one decides whether the rest is worth discussing.
A jacket is a structure. Underneath the outer cloth there is canvas, padding, and a shoulder assembly built to hold a shape. That structure is why a jacket looks different from a cardigan, and it is why some parts of a jacket can be altered and others cannot.
Assess in this order.
1. Shoulders — the one that decides everything
The shoulder seam should sit at the outer edge of your shoulder, where the flat top of the shoulder begins to curve down into the arm. Put a finger on that bony point; the seam should be there.
Too wide and the sleeve head collapses, producing a dent or a soft fold just below the seam. The jacket looks borrowed.
Too narrow and you get a diagonal pull from the shoulder toward the armpit, and the sleeve head strains.
Neither is worth fixing. Reconstructing a shoulder means unpicking the sleeve, the canvas and the lining and rebuilding the assembly. Any tailor who agrees to it cheaply is not going to do it well.
2. Chest and the button
Fasten the top button — on a two-button jacket, the top one only; on a three-button, the middle. The bottom button is never fastened, a convention usually traced to Edward VII and now simply how jackets are cut.
Look at what the button does. A small, soft X of tension radiating from it means the jacket is too tight through the chest or waist. A large gaping V above the button, with the lapels standing away from the chest, means the balance is wrong or it is too loose.
You should be able to slide a flat hand between chest and jacket comfortably, and not much more.
Stand naturally and look at the back of the collar. It should sit flat against your shirt collar with no gap. A visible gap — collar standing away from the neck — usually indicates a balance problem, often a posture mismatch. A collar that rides up and bunches means the same in reverse. Both are fixable by a good tailor and neither is trivial.
3. Length
The traditional rule is that the jacket should cover your seat. A more reliable version: let your arms hang and curl your fingers; the hem should fall roughly into your cupped hand.
The other check is proportion. The jacket should divide your body so that the visible leg below the hem is roughly equal to, or slightly longer than, the jacket above it. A jacket that is too short makes the legs look stumpy despite the current fashion for it; too long and you lose the leg entirely.
Length can be altered a little from the hem, but only a little, because shortening moves the pockets and the button stance out of proportion.
4. Sleeves
End at the break of the wrist, showing about a centimetre of shirt cuff. Easily altered from the cuff. Get it done.
5. The back
Look at yourself from behind, or have someone photograph you.
Horizontal folds across the upper back mean the jacket is too long in the back balance or the shoulders are too square for you.
Vertical folds below the collar mean excess width.
The vent pulling open when you stand still means the jacket is too tight through the seat. A vent should hang closed and only open when you move.
The armhole nobody mentions
The most important difference between a cheap jacket and an expensive one, and it is invisible.
Cheap jackets have low, wide armholes, which are faster to manufacture and more forgiving of size variation. The consequence is that when you raise your arm, the whole jacket lifts with it — the shoulders rise, the collar pops off your neck, the front pulls apart.
A high, small armhole lets the arm move independently of the body of the jacket. You can reach for something on a shelf and the collar stays put.
Test it in the shop. Raise your arm to shoulder height. If the whole jacket comes with it, that is what you will live with, and no alteration will fix it.
Buying by these rules
Pick the jacket whose shoulders fit and whose armholes let you move. Accept that the waist may be loose, the sleeves long and the sides boxy — all of which a tailor will fix.
This means you frequently buy a size that looks wrong on the hanger and wrong in the mirror before alteration. Learning to see past that is the whole skill, and it is why so many people end up in jackets a size too small: the smaller one looks more fitted in the changing room, and it will pull at the button and lift at the collar for the rest of its life.
