clothing advice

[stuffedsuperdud]

Late to the party (missed my bat signal, sorry), but note that Sexy Men of E&P have your sartorial needs covered so check that waywt thread. But as long as you're here, here's a datadump:

Suit jacket:
-Many parts of a suit can be altered about 2" in either direction, including midsection, chest, and pants waist without distorting the proportions too much, so don't feel like you need to wait.
-The one part part of a jacket that more or less cannot be altered is the shoulders, as a ton of complexities intersect there. However, since you are at the end of your LP, you can proooobably get away with something that fits there now, but YMMV: for all we know you might get huge on TM. I didn't but then again I am a pussy that can't even press BW, so there's that.
-When you put on a jacket, the shoulder seam should hit where you clavicle and scapula meet. Any bigger and you'll have an ugly overhang.
-Jacket collar should sit flush against your shirt collar with no gap unless you're leaning your head forward.
-A jacket with smaller armholes (the hole where the tubular structure that is the sleeve connects to the torso section) will be more comfortable. Larger armholes means when you raise your arms, you'll look like a flying squirrel, and the whole jacket will shift around awkwardly. I like to feel the armhole just cutting slightly into my armpit.
-A primary feature in nicer jackets is the presence of a canvas chestpiece sewn inside, which over time will drape more elegantly on your chest. Cheaper suits have a gluey later inside, which does not perform as such. If you don't expect to wear this much though, then there's no real point. Some will say that glue doesn't hold up well in dry cleaning, but newer polymers don't really have this problem.
-Don't let some jerkwad sell you a 3-button jacket, as those wrap around a torso like a barrel; no one looks good in one of those. Go with two buttons, with the top button near your natural waistline, usually slightly above your bellybutton. That should also be the narrowest point of the jacket. If you're feeling like a dandy, go with a one-button, but those are very rare off the rack.
-Lifters usually do better with two side vents behind the jacket. One central vent and it'll be split apart by your glutes and look like a broken stage curtain. Besides, one vent is usually considered more casual, as it was originally put there to facilitate horseback riding while wearing a hunting jacket or a rugged sportcoat, whereas a proper suit is not supposed to get near the stables.
-Proper jacket length should just cover your butt. More casual jackets and ones from fast-fashion vendors (H&M, Express, Uniqlo) will be shorter. These are just general guidelines and ultimately proper proportion depends on your torso length and leg length. At 6' though, I imagine a traditional R -length jacket will do fine.
-See what the lining (the smooth silky layer inside the suit jacket) is made out of. Cheaper suits will use polyester which can get really stuffy really fast. Bemberg/cupro/rayon is much more comfortable, but tend to only be available on pricier items.

Pants
-The waist usually has the same 2" or so that you can work with in either direction before the back pockets look mispositioned.
-For thighs, turn the pants inside out and see how much excess fabric there is at the seam; nice brands will allow about 2" while cheaper brands, to save fabric, will include as little as 0.5", which sucks.
-If the pants come unhemmed, ask your tailor if he can save the extra material and make side tabs out of them for the waistband, which are much more adjustable than a belt.
-Also consider suspenders, which look dorky, I know, but are much more comfortable than a belt, as it hangs your pants from your shoulders, your body's natural load-bearing structure, whereas a belt acts mostly by increasing the friction against your torso, an inherently uncomfortable proposition that we've accepted as normal for the past 100 years.
-Speaking of dorky, consider pleated pants for additional butt/thigh comfort. They have taken a bad rap because they only look good when worn high-waisted and current trends are low-waist pants, but there is nothing inherently wrong with them.

General:
-Suit wools come in many weights. Pick one that is appropriate for your climate. No one really needs a heavy flannel suit like Don Draper wears, and an all-linen one will make you look like a 1980s coke dealer. Wool was made for use in coldish England, so if you run hot as lifters tend to, try a wool-linen or wool-cotton blend. They are cooler than pure wool, but will not rumple as easily as an all-cotton or all-linen suit. Avoid polyester blends as those get sweaty quickly and don't hang on your body as nicely.
-Your first suit should be the versatile dark charcoal or navy with no pattern, which fit the widest range of formalities.

Brands:
-Traditional makers like Hickey Freeman, Samuelsohn, Hart Schaffner Marx, and Brooks Bros will all include nice suit features in modern but not overly slim cuts. You'll have to pay a bit more than the $200 at Jos A Bank but it's well worth it for something you expect to use a lot.
-"Designer" makers like Hugo Boss, Armani, CK, Hilfiger sell for gargantuan markups and are almost never worth it unless you can find them for like 80% off.
-The trendier brands (Bonobos, J.Crew, Banana, Suitsupply, Combat Gent to a certain extent) generally also avoid the problems of cheaper suits, while also not charging you as much as Hickey and such, but one fatal flaw: they usually come with pants that don't fit lifters' thighs, even after you go one size up. You can go two sizes up but then you have that problem with taking in the waistband too much.
-J.Crew Factory (their outlet) carries a line of relatively affordable "Thompson" suits that might work well for you. The pants are sold as separates and in both slim and regular fits. Get the regular fit.
-It's blasphemy in #menswear discussions to mention the 800lb gorilla, but I've found that the "modern fit" suits at Mens Wearhouse are okay fit-wise, right off the rack. Try to get one of the Joseph Abboud Made in USA ones if you can; the rest of their wares don't have a great qualityrice ratio, even when on sale.
-More blasphemy: my favorite sportcoat right now is actually a $50 thing from JCPenney's Stafford slim-fit line. They make suits too; check them out.

I wrote all of this off the top of my head; let me know if anything is unclear or inconsistent.


And since this is the Q&A, Rip, I have not found the need to carry contraceptives in any of my suits, even the custom ones, and even after I squatted 200kg. Where am I messing up? Will things look up when I squat 300? Please help.

[pplshero54]

Suit jacket:
-Lifters usually do better with two side vents behind the jacket. One central vent and it'll be split apart by your glutes and look like a broken stage curtain. Besides, one vent is usually considered more casual, as it was originally put there to facilitate horseback riding while wearing a hunting jacket or a rugged sportcoat, whereas a proper suit is not supposed to get near the stables.

I heard that the single central vent look can only be pulled off by people with squatting butts, if you want to bring attention to that area. Not saying it looks better than the double vent but if you can't find the suit you want or can afford with double vents, it isn't a deal breaker.
Suit Jacket Vents | Which Style for Which Body Type | Single Vent | Double Vent | No Vent Jackets
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shoul...ket-dan-thomas

Also James Bond in Skyfall also wears single vented jackets and it looks good on him.
What is your favourite style of jacket vent? ? The Suits of James Bond

[Mark Rippetoe]

Question for Stuffed: If cost was not a factor, what would you wear? Are "6-make" suits still called that? I'd be asking about 3-make level clothing.

[calmasahinducow]

One very important thing missing from stuffedsuperdud's post, especially the part about climate, is how a suit is lined. That's way more important than the actual jacket material (but yes avoid polyester at any cost) when it comes to how warm a jacket is. A linen jacket fully lined with polyester will be much hotter than a super 120 jacket half lined with bemberg or silk. Canvassing is also important but not as important for temperature control.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Question for Stuffed: If cost was not a factor, what would you wear? Are "6-make" suits still called that? I'd be asking about 3-make level clothing.

I am actually not familiar with that terminology. What is a 3-make or 6-make suit? Google University is letting me down.

To answer your question as best I can without that information, obviously if cost was not an issue, custom is the only way to go for suits and sportcoats. I am a big enough nerd about this that I notice all the little details that go into a tailored garment, and not just obvious ones like # of buttons or center vs side vents, either. Things like roped vs. natural shoulders, lapel width, button height, straight vs. slanted pockets, pattern matching, vent length, leg opening size, they all jump out at me, and it’s very difficult to get it all lined up in an RTW garment. An alterations tailor can optimize the fit but most of the details are stuck because you can’t, say, sew up the factory-made buttonholes or pocket slits and cut new ones.

The other obvious advantage of custom is that the tailor can cut you a jacket to account for asymmetries such as my slightly uneven shoulders and legs. An alterations tailor will try to do what he can, but as soon as the shoulder work becomes too involved, he’ll usually tell you not to bother, as you’ll end up spending just as much as if you had gone custom. One thing I won’t bother with is super expensive fabric. There are guys paying $10,000+ for suits made out of Super 240s unicorn wool, which are annoying for tailors to work with, wrinkle very easily, and are too fragile to be sued more than a few times a year; I don’t like to dress up for the sake of dressing up, or to constantly worry about getting water on my sleeve. A hard-wearing medium weight S100s worsted is perfectly fine. One vanity item though, if $ is not a factor: I might be inclined to get a morning suit made (can you even buy these off the rack anywhere?) and walk around every day like it’s a royal wedding.

For everything else, off the rack with a bit of tailoring has been perfectly usable and I don’t see much point in spending a ton of time and energy getting a polo shirt or pants made from scratch. Some folks in E&P have had custom dress shirts but they didn’t seem all that different from RTW.

Again I might have a better answer once I know what #-make suits were.

One very important thing missing from stuffedsuperdud's post, especially the part about climate, is how a suit is lined. That's way more important than the actual jacket material (but yes avoid polyester at any cost) when it comes to how warm a jacket is. A linen jacket fully lined with polyester will be much hotter than a super 120 jacket half lined with bemberg or silk. Canvassing is also important but not as important for temperature control.

Ah yes! Totally forgot about that. Half-lining is the way to go, in the sleeves and the shoulder, to allow the jacket to drape and slide smoothly where it rubs against your body. The rest of the jacket can go unlined as it’s not going to catch on the small of your back or your butt or anything; gravity will naturally straighten that out when you stand. My old tailor told me that once upon a time, half-lining was the only way to go except perhaps for a heavy flannel or tweed jacket for use in winter, or if the jacket was made of a very lightweight and light-colored fabric, e.g. ivory tropical wool, as without a full liner, your pants and shirt will show through. These days almost all RTW jackets use full lining because it allows the maker to stitch together the body of the jacket very quickly and sloppily and then cover up the mess with the liner, but at least the nicer ones use Bemberg instead of poly. Don’t think it’s negligible, either. See the guys that have to ditch their jackets at a wedding as soon as the dancing starts? It’s the poly liner, not the wool exterior, that’s killing them.

[Mark Rippetoe]

It was a system of grading the quality of a suit based, IIRC, on the amount of handwork that went into its production. An x-make suit was sold at Robert Hall for $85, a 6-make suit was sold at Nieman Marcus for $3K. This dates me, I'm sure.

[John Weaver]

Anyone have thoughts (pros / cons) on or experience with online custom suit makers? I hear one advertised on podcasts often.

[jwagner]

Anyone have thoughts (pros / cons) on or experience with online custom suit makers? I hear one advertised on podcasts often.

I've only used Indochino for a wedding once. Quality was fine for the price, fit on the jacket was almost perfect, but terrible on the pants. I think ssd mentioned it, but a lot of the modern makers are designing the pants to sit low on the waist and don't expect men to have a squatter's butt even if they have both the waist and seat measurements. Anyway, this resulted in pants that were nearly 4 inches too large at the waist and did not stay up at all. My tailor was able to make them useable, but like ssd mentioned earlier, taking too much from the waist makes the back pockets look a little funny. Luckily the coat covered most of that and the pants fit didn't look terrible in the photos.

The MTM suit I got from my tailor several years ago was much better fitting and much nicer fabric albeit at almost double the cost. Unfortunately, my chest and shoulder size has increased too much for it to be altered.

[stuffedsuperdud]

It was a system of grading the quality of a suit based, IIRC, on the amount of handwork that went into its production. An x-make suit was sold at Robert Hall for $85, a 6-make suit was sold at Nieman Marcus for $3K. This dates me, I'm sure.

Ahh! Well then it'd have to be a 6 then. Handwork only counts when it is backed by a sharp eye and many years of training, where the tailor does things like spending inordinate amounts of energy lining up the pattern in the fabric at the seams, or when he carefully applies thousands of stitches one by one to chest piece to sculpt it in a way that perfectly aligns with the wearer. Half-assed handwork done by a factory worker who took a crash course in sewing can result in an item that is sloppier and more expensive than what a machine could have made, but without the actual benefits of doing it the hard old-fashioned way.

At the moment, since $$ is indeed a factor, I'm perfectly happy with something like Hickey Freeman made to measure. Most of the details are customizable and the fit is great upon arrival; the in-store tailor usually further dials the fit up free of additional charge such that the gen pop can't tell it wasn't a true bespoke item that required several fittings over the course of months. Doesn't cost much more than what "designers" shamelessly charge, either, unless you choose a high-end fabric. I guess on the scale these might be a 3 or a 4? I don't know if they use optical sensors and lasers to cut the fabric; they do post videos of their seamstresses using machines to put everything together, and for the "sculptable" elements, namely the shoulder pads and the chest piece, don't quote me on this but it seems they buy them pre-made and just install them into the jackets.

Anyone have thoughts (pros / cons) on or experience with online custom suit makers? I hear one advertised on podcasts often.

I've only ever tried Indochino, and the results were comically unsatisfactory. It's hard for a friend to measure you, and even if they get it all right, the guys at the factory in China will go and change everything around on you because when you deviate too much from the mannequin they'll think you made a mistake, and just do what they think is right. For the issues unrelated to fit, note that your options are relatively limited: at any given time they'll only have a few fabrics to choose from for some reason, and while you can adjust basic things like # of buttons, straight vs slanted pockets, etc. you can't make any subtle adjustments like lapel width, exact button stance, amount of shoulder padding, etc. So it's got the trappings of a custom garment when really you just have a slightly more precise off the rack suit.

In my case, I actually went to their Beverly Hills showroom to get measured in person, and with the hopes that I could make specific requests to the sales associate that the website would not allow, but they didn't actually have any skilled employees there, just former J.Crew salesgirls who will fake-flirt with guys who walk in order to close a sale. Once your suit comes, they'll offer to reimburse up to $75 for a local tailor to tweak anything; $75 is enough to adjust the sleeves and pants hem, but anything else and it'll be on you. They do have an in-house guy who will do it free but it'll take forever and there will be a lot of pushback because it hurts the company's bottom line if their guy is occupied making difficult alterations. If it's truly not a great fit, they can order a remake for you, but again, the sales associates will do their best to convince you that that is not necessary.

Do you live near a Nordstrom? They do Hickey, HSF, and Canali MTM and the results are much better. You'd be talking to the store tailor and a very knowledgeable sales associate, both of whom are in direct contact with the people who work at the factory, allowing you to make more specific requests. The tradeoff is that it'll cost 2-3x more than an Indochino, but well worth the difference, I think. Nermin in the waywt thread swears by Samuelsohn MTM, available sometimes in the US but not as widely as the other 3.

If you live near an Enzo Custom (locations are in NYC, DC, Philly, Chicago, LA) try them; they're the badly-advertised MTM arm of some factory in China that manufactures for various big-name brands. I went to the DC location and the sales reps were very knowledgeable. Huge fabric selection, tons of customizable options, and cheaper than the above names because of the lower cost of Chinese labor.

[johnnys]

In my case, I actually went to their Beverly Hills showroom to get measured in person, and with the hopes that I could make specific requests to the sales associate that the website would not allow, but they didn't actually have any skilled employees there, just former J.Crew salesgirls who will fake-flirt with guys who walk in order to close a sale. Once your suit comes, they'll offer to reimburse up to $75 for a local tailor to tweak anything; $75 is enough to adjust the sleeves and pants hem, but anything else and it'll be on you. They do have an in-house guy who will do it free but it'll take forever and there will be a lot of pushback because it hurts the company's bottom line if their guy is occupied making difficult alterations. If it's truly not a great fit, they can order a remake for you, but again, the sales associates will do their best to convince you that that is not necessary.

I had a much better in-store experience with Indochino in Philly. No limit on tailoring mentioned, and I had 2 adjustments on the pants and 1 on the jacket. The cut is more "skinny" than I'm used to, but otherwise what I'd hoped. I also have a handful of their shirts, which are the only ones I own that don't require the "military tuck" side dart folds my dad taught me.