How To Fit a Suit Jacket

[Music] in this fitting we're going to take a look at a suit jacket so there are quite a few things we can look at with the suit jacket the most common are sleeve length sleeve width and the jacket body fit throughout the back and through the sides the less common but possible alterations for a suit jacket would be shoulder fit jacket length and even narrowing the lapel for an older jacket that we want to modernize so with this suit jacket we're going to take a look at the length of the sleeve and the width of the sleeve this width is a little bit wide when we're taking the width of the sleeve in we're going to start at the hem or the cuff and move up the jacket toward the armhole and we're just pinching out along this underarm seam most suit jackets are constructed very similarly so they're going to have an underarm seam that comes in and matches up with the side seam we are just going to pinch into all the way up into the armhole and then we're going to have the customer bend is that comfortable does it look like the pins are pinching too much no that looks good to me so we're going to narrow that width then if the customer did want to lengthen or shorten the sleeve these sleeves have about an inch of extra room that they can be let down and lengthened and suit jackets again are pretty standard in their seam allowance so we know that we could give him an inch if he needed it if we needed to shorten the sleeve we are just going to go right ahead and pin that under and let the customer take a look at it very straightforward we'll pin through the button placket and then just let them take a look the standard jacket sleeve should hit right at the break in the hand so the cuff is going to show from the shirt underneath it's going to show about half an inch and we want our jacket to be just about half an inch above that let's move to the body of the jacket we're going to have the customer button the first button for me great and then go ahead and turn around for me and we'll take a look at these three seams in the back so we've got our blades going over the shoulder blade area and then we've got our center back seam and on this jacket we have a single vent we could also have double vents to take in the body of the jacket the we want to start at the smallest part which is the waist and we're just going to feel for that then we're going to pinch evenly amount and take a look how does that look how does that fit the customer that looks good i'm going to ask him how does that feel is that too tight or does that feel comfortable and he'll be able to look in the mirror and say yeah i think i like the way that that fits then i'm going to take that amount that i've pinched i'm going to feel under the jacket and make sure that i don't have his shirt caught in there which i did and then pin out that amount and again that's right at the waist and i know that because i'm feeling for his waist i feel that that's the smallest part of his body then we're just going to take that's going to be the deepest amount we take and then we're going to merge that amount back out or if the entire hem is too baggy and too blousy we'll pin all the way straight through the hemline perfect and then up into the arm so now we've finished pinning out the amount that we'd like to take out but if we wanted to instead let the jacket out the jacket is too tight then all we're going to do is slash down that seam with our chalk and make the alterations note say how much we want to let the jacket out typically with a regular suit jacket they're not going to give us more than maybe about an inch of seam allowance so if the jacket hasn't been taken in before we've only got an inch in there and we'll make a note in the alterations ticket if the seamstress doesn't have enough later we'll worry about that then but for now we'll tell the customer no problem we can let that out as long as they can still button it in the front if the jacket is so tight that they can't button it at all there is definitely not enough seam allowance inside to let it out now the last thing that we want to look at while we're in the back is the collar roll on this jacket we can see that there's a very slight pull here you see that so they call it a collar roll because it is a roll it's a roll of extra fabric and how we're going to fix that is we'll actually remove the collar and move this fabric reshaping it into the collar later but to mark it we're just going to pinch with our fingers see how much extra material there is there so we're just going to make a mark there to indicate this is how much we'd like to take out this amount of fabric will actually be smoothed into the collar but this is the way we're going to mark it to indicate that that'll be enough to indicate what we're saying so now we've taken in the jacket we've marked the collar roll we've looked at the sleeve width and length and now we're ready to take a look at some of our more complicated alterations on this jacket there are a few things that we can do to really modernize and update the look one is the length this jacket is a little bit long and the customer would like to take it up now when we pin this because of the curved edge it'll be hard to give them a good idea of exactly what that curved edge will look like so don't worry about getting that part pinned exactly it's the length that we want to pin up typically i don't like to go more than two inches up because then we're conflicting with the pocket so we'll let the customer go as far up as roughly two inches and we're going to pin that in place on one side of the jacket and allow them to compare it to the other side so we'll pin the front we'll pin the side and we'll pin the back coming to the first vent wherever that falls then we'll allow the customer to take a look and compare the two sides so he can see the front and we'll assure him we're going to put the curve back in exactly as you see it but it will be shorter there so he can take a look at both sides and then turn and take a look at the side and the back that's where it's going to hit now great now after the length is done we're going to take a look at the lapel in comparison to the overall length of the jacket i see that the lapel is a little bit wide a bit of an older style the only complication we have is right here this little guy this is a real buttonhole it's a functioning buttonhole which means it's been sewn and cut through the entire side so we cannot go past the buttonhole we can go up to it which we can mark with chalk and give the customer an idea of exactly how much we can take that lapel in down to the natural curve right above the button so every suit jacket will have it's the natural curve of where it falls and the lapel turns over to turn into our button placket so this nice white chalk helps the customer visualize what we see which is yeah we'll be able to take that lapel in about a quarter of an inch three-eighths of an inch and he can see that in the mirror finally we're going to take a look at the shoulders what i like to do is place my hand flat palm against the shoulder if the shoulder comes out and juts out past my flat hand or flat palm i know it's too big this jacket fits him well you can see the curve of his arm you can see that the shoulder seam sits where his actual shoulder is and i know that because i can feel it but if this shoulder and padding were jutting out past that we could pinch that amount out now with the jacket padding and the structure of a suit jacket there's too much material in there to really pin it so again we're going to use our chalk and say i think we need to take it in this much and we're pinching that amount we're pinching it and we're feeling it while the customer is looking at himself in the mirror he can see what we're doing he can see the new seam that we're putting in and he can say yes that looks good oh no that's too much or it's still a little baggy to me and we're going to do that down the front and we're going to do that down the back same maneuver where we're pinching and we're marking with the chalk both on the jacket itself and on the sleeve enough so that we can see exactly where we want to take it into and we want to end wherever our back blade is so we want to end before this and we're going to do that with our chalk we're really sculpting this is really an artistic alteration because it it involves a lot of opinion you are looking at the proportions of the jacket and the man and deciding where those lines go because we are going to cut down this alteration a few very important things about these three alterations the shoulder the lapel and the hem is that they are irreversible we cannot let them back out once they're cut and they're reshaped they are done so it's really important that we take the opinion of the customer into consideration and let them know exactly what we plan on doing because we cannot take it back you

Channel: TallgrassTailor

Views: 64,147

Keywords: Alterations Tulsa, Tallgrass Tailor, Tulsa Tailor, Wedding Dress Alterations Tulsa, Suit Alterations Tulsa, Suit jacket, tailoring, tailor shop

Id: jzz-N8Z9Xic

Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021