How a Suit Should Fit: The Checks Your Tailor Makes in Silence

A good tailor says very little during a fitting. He walks around you twice, tugs gently at the back of the collar, pinches a little cloth at the waist, and makes a few marks in chalk. Then he says "Very good, sir," which can mean anything at all.

What he is doing, in that silence, is running through a sequence of checks so familiar to him that he no longer notices he is doing it. You should know them too. Not to argue with your tailor, which is unwise, but so that you can buy well before you ever reach him.

Stand up straight. Arms by your sides. Breathe normally. We begin at the top.

The shoulder line. The seam should sit at the edge of your own shoulder bone, not beyond it and not short of it. Run a hand down from the shoulder to the sleeve. If you feel a shelf of padding before your arm begins, the jacket is too wide. If the sleeve head is dimpled or pulling, it is too narrow.

The divot. Look at the top of the sleeve, just below the shoulder seam. A small dent there is a sign that the shoulder is too broad for you and the sleeve is collapsing into the gap. This is the costliest fault to fix, and often one that cannot be fixed properly at all. Treat it as a reason to keep shopping.

The collar gap. From the side, the jacket collar should sit snugly against your shirt collar, with roughly half an inch or so of shirt showing above it at the back. If there is daylight between jacket and shirt, the collar is standing away from the neck. Your tailor will chalk a short line here, and he will look concerned, because he knows this alteration involves more than one seam.

The shoulders and the collar are the foundation. Get them right and almost everything else can be adjusted. Get them wrong and almost nothing can.

The lapels. They should lie flat against the chest. If they bow outward when you stand naturally, the chest is too tight or the jacket is cut for a different posture.

The button. Fasten it. The front should close cleanly with no strain. Creases radiating from the button towards the hips or the shoulders are the cloth telling you, as politely as cloth can, that it is under duress. A fist should slip between the fastened jacket and your shirt without much effort, but there should be no room for a second one.

The waist. A good jacket is suppressed slightly at the waist so that it follows the body without clinging to it. Your tailor's pinch at the side seams is him measuring how much cloth can be taken in. The chalk he leaves there is a promise. Do not ask him to break it by taking in more.

Sleeve pitch is the most overlooked check in tailoring and one of the most revealing. It is the angle at which the sleeve is attached to the body of the jacket. Everyone's arms hang slightly differently: some forward, some back.

Let your arms fall naturally. If the sleeve is pitched correctly, the fabric falls cleanly to the cuff. If it is pitched wrongly, diagonal wrinkles twist across the upper arm, as though the sleeve is trying to rotate to a position that suits it rather than you. A tailor who checks this, and is willing to correct it, is a tailor worth keeping.

Sleeve length. The jacket sleeve should finish where the wrist meets the hand, allowing a little shirt cuff to show. With the arms relaxed, the cuff of the jacket should not reach the base of the thumb. This is the most common alteration of all, and the cheapest, and it is still astonishing how many men skip it.

The back. Turn around. The cloth across your back should be smooth from collar to waist. Horizontal ripples just below the collar usually mean the collar needs lowering or the back needs adjusting. Vertical folds suggest too much cloth. Either way, the back is where a fitting is often won or lost, because it is the part you never see and everyone else always does.

The length. The jacket should cover the seat of your trousers. Proportion matters more than any single measurement; a jacket that ends mid-seat makes the legs look short, and one that reaches your knuckles makes you look as though you are wearing your father's.

The vents. They should hang closed when you stand. If they pull open like curtains, the jacket is too tight across the hips. That is not a vent. That is a stage show.

The waist and the rise. Trousers should sit at your natural waist or close to it, and stay there without a belt doing all the work. A rise that is too low divides the body in an unfortunate place and leaves the shirt struggling to remain tucked.

The seat. Smooth, with no sagging and no stretch lines. If the pockets flare open when you stand, the hips are too tight.

The leg and the hem. The leg should fall cleanly from the hip to the shoe with a gentle taper. The hem should touch the top of the shoe with a slight break, or none. Your tailor will pin it while you stand in the shoes you intend to wear. Bring the right shoes. Bringing trainers to a hem fitting is like bringing a photograph of someone else to a portrait sitting.

Most of what makes a suit look expensive is not the cloth or the label but the fit, and most of that is decided at the shoulder and collar, which are the hardest things to change. Knowing the checks lets a man buy the right foundation off the rack and spend his alteration budget on the adjustments that actually work: sleeves, waist, hem. For menswear brands, it also explains why fit consistency and a good alterations policy matter as much as fabric. A customer who has been fitted well rarely needs persuading to come back.

Until next week,

B.

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Forward this to a man who has never once seen the back of his own jacket.