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Men's Jackets & Waist Suppression - Tailoring An Off The Rack Men's Suit - Menswear Alterations
Hi! I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style. Today, we're going to be talking
about waist suppression in a men's jacket.
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day, I get "thank you's", people telling me what they love about this e-book. I'm also
going to link you to an article which talks more about how to get your jacket adjusted
when you go to a tailor.
This is the question that came in. "Antonio, I just bought an off-the-rack navy blazer
and after reading your articles, I was glad to know what to ask the tailor for. Every
man should know this. How exactly though should the waist be tailored? The tailor said he'll
take some fabric off the back to make the jacket tighter, but I don't know if he's going
to taper it exactly how I want it. I remember seeing pins all the way up the back of the
jacket. Should I ask him to taper the waist more? How can I know if the waist and the
blazer as well was tailored correctly? I've never had a properly fitted jacket before,
so I'm not sure what I should be looking for or if he even does a good job."
That was my friend, Jessie. I believe he's up north in Canada. So Jessie is new into
this game and I also know Jessie is really at a point where he's still very price-conscious
and is putting a lot of time and investment into learning about men's style, and that's
the first thing, is he knew what to ask for. He even has a pretty good idea of what to
look for, but what Jessie doesn’t know and he doesn’t own is already a jacket that
fits him really well, so he doesn’t know what a good fitting jacket actually feels
like and truly looks on his body.
My first point with this, Jessie, is that you're going to have to go with it. You're
going to have to experiment and you can't expect perfection the first time. Working
with a tailor, it's like any type of business relationship. You've got to feel it out. You've
got to go back and forth and really you want to plant the seeds for a long fruitful relationship.
My first bit of advice is don't expect -- I think in today's society, we've come to expect
-- I mean, companies like Google provide us amazing applications for free and we come
to expect that from a lot of other things that we get them almost for free. You've got
to expect though with a tailor, we're a bit more old school and we can't remind -- we'll
do the best we can, but it's really what you're doing is you're trading dollars for their
time. So if you do need a second adjustment, expect to pay for this, but that's okay because
what you're looking to do is get this first jacket perfect.
A good tailor, maybe he'll have to adjust it two times. There are some tailors that
will get lucky and get it right the first time, but I can tell you, having worked with
thousands of men and design suits for them, even though I think I'm going to get it perfect
and I look at the pictures and I think the fit is perfect, when a man puts on a jacket,
it's a very personal thing. Fit is incredibly personal. The tailor may look at you and he
may think it looks perfect, but you had a different picture in your mind. Again, we're
not mind-readers, so you're going to have to put on that jacket, look at yourself in
the mirror, and see how that feels and then ask for any adjustments you need.
Now, if you came to me, as a custom clothier, I would provide those alterations again and
again for free, but you came to this gentleman for the alterations, so you're going to have
to pay for the second. Hopefully you won't have to pay for the third. Beyond that, he
should be getting really close. You'll have to work that out with him and it depends on
the tailor, but expect to pay for the second round of alterations, but that's okay because
all of a sudden, you now have a jacket that fits you really well, so the next time you
go in to work with that tailor, you wear that jacket when you go see him again. That way,
he can remember and he can also even measure that jacket and know, okay, this is what this
gentleman wants. This is what this gentleman likes.
So let's go and I'm going to start answering questions about what kind of waist suppression
you should look for and what does waist suppression even mean. From your chest down to your waist
to your hips, what we see -- as guys, we look around. Yes, you notice that women have the
hourglass figure. Well, to an extent, a healthy male somewhat has that, although his hips
are not nearly as wide and the difference in his chest is more from the sides than in
the front. Well, hopefully if you're a normal guy. Okay, I'm not going to go there.
The point is that if you have a larger chest and a smaller waist, then you want your jacket
to reflect that. You don't want to be cartoonish though and you don't want to have your clothing
fit so tight that it's starting to look feminine. So a good tailor is going to balance that.
Most jackets are going to have it especially if you buy one that's got an athletic build,
and if they say athletic build, oftentimes it doesn’t mean that it's going to have
more waist suppression. What that means is that the trousers that are paired with it
are just going to be a little bit smaller, so don't fall for that. Be really careful.
What you want to look for is if you have that athletic build, that very young man or a man
that takes care of himself, masculine shape, then you want your jacket to somewhat reflect
that. If you look on the jacket I'm wearing right here, you can occasionally see a bit
of light right in here on the video. That's because this jacket isn't square. There is
about a 4.5 to 6-inch drop. I have to actually pull this. I've got that variation with my
jackets between the chest size and the waist size even though on my body, there's a little
bit more, so it's actually a little bit looser in the waist area and it's a little bit closer
fitting in the chest area.
This is the fit I like and it's what I want to go for, but a man, he doesn’t want to
go for more than 8 inches of a drop and that's where the difference between the chest and
the stomach, again, you don't want that. If you laid the jacket out, you don't want that
to be more than 8 inches even if you're a body builder. I've got body builders that
come and they literally have 12-inch drops. Now, I don't build the jacket exactly like
that because it would come off as cartoonish.
There's also the area of the hips, so the jacket is going to flare back out. Unlike
women, men don't usually have wide hips. So with the thinner hips, you're going to have
less of a flare out, but it's still going to be closer in size to the size of your chest.
What you end up getting then is a little bit of, again, it's almost like the hourglass
figure, not as extreme though as on a woman, but that little bit of indention here in the
area of the midsection. Again, you have to be in shape for this. It looks very healthy.
It looks very masculine because what it does is it builds up the apparent size of the chest,
so I'm not a huge guy but my best looks bigger. My shoulders look more broad when I wear a
jacket that fits me properly.
That works for thin men. That works for men that are in shape and take care of their bodies,
and I could go into more detail -- not in this video -- about the structure of the jacket
and other things. Again, we're going to talk about the waist suppression, but what if you're
a larger guy? What if you're a little bit portly around the midsection? Then this is
when you want to go for a more square look because the square look is better than the
round look.
As a man, you do not want a round look, so what you're going to do is you want to make
sure any jacket you try on fits you well in the shoulders and fits you in the chest area.
You can let out a little bit in the midsection, but the idea is to build up your top area
a bit more to balance and to give you a more square look, so because you have a little
bit of excess material there, you're not going to be able to have any waist suppression,
but that's not a bad thing. Again, it's better for you to have that square look than to have
the round look.
What you don't want to do is try to wear a jacket that is too small on you. That's always
going to look bad. So for a larger guy, when it comes to waist suppression, this isn't
something he's going to have to worry about. Oftentimes, they're just looking for a jacket
that's going to be able to button. If the jacket buttons fine here, you can actually
have it brought in a little bit more in the chest. It's going to be okay to let the shoulders
go out just a little bit more. You don't want them to make you look like a linebacker, but
on the other hand, you want them to balance that midsection area.
Hopefully that answers what's waist suppression. Again, you don't want to go to an extreme
especially if you're a body builder and you're out there looking for a jacket. Talk with
a custom clothier. Talk with someone that makes made-to-measure. Your life is just going
to be so much easier. You're one of the hardest profiles to fit. If you're smaller and thin,
then it's really a matter of just making sure that the chest and the shoulders fit properly
and you can have that midsection usually adjusted or brought in by about two inches.
I'm going to close it by talking about how much a made-to-measure jacket such as what
this gentleman has can be adjusted. It depends on the skill of the tailor, but expect around
two inches. There are usually three spots on a jacket where they can bring it in. Most
tailors or seamstresses or whoever you go to are going to try to just adjust it in the
back, so there's a line usually down the back of a jacket and they can usually bring it
in about an inch there, and that will fix many problems. A lot of guys, when they're
just asking for a bit, that one inch is going to be a big difference and the tailors love
it because they only have to open up the back of the jacket. And it's very easy to cover
up and hide if they make any errors or if they don't stitch it very well.
What's harder though is if they want to get more than an inch. Then they're going to have
to start bringing in on the sides because if you bring in two inches directly on the
back, it's going to change the whole dynamics of the jacket and how it lays on your shoulders.
Once you start asking for more than an inch, they have to start bringing in on the sides.
And if you start getting in extreme or if it's a really skilled tailor and he wants
to balance the adjustment fully around the jacket, he's also going to bring it in if
you have darts.
In my jackets, I've got a little dart here. The problem with the front dart area is that
he may also have to move the pockets, and so it's a lot more work. Again, as you start
to go closer to that 2-inch -- I've seen it 2.5 inches on it or even 3 inches on a bigger
jacket. Again, this has to do with proportion. If it's a really small jacket, expect it to
be able to be adjusted less. If it's a huge jacket, you can adjust it more. Again, it's
kind of a proportion issue, but the more you want to have it adjusted, the more skill of
the tailor you're going to need to find and expect the higher the cost because he's going
to have to adjust it in more areas.
Hopefully that gives you a better idea of waist suppression. I will see you guys in
the next video. Bye-bye.