What Makes A Good Suit?
Introduction.
A suit is the pinnacle of menswear. It prepares you for the most important aspects of life, provides confidence, courage and can even lead to recognition.
I have spent almost 6 years consulting with people on what suit they should have, either off the rack, made to measure, or bespoke. As a result I have become very familiar with what to do, not to do, what works on different people and spot clearly the differences between a good suit and a bad suit.
I have been fortunate to wear suits from places that many people would only ever dream of, from both British designers and Savile Row. Through lived experience I can comment on what is most important when looking for a good suit, regardless of what your budget is. Furthermore, consulting with people on their made-to-measure or bespoke suit, created an obsession with cloth and types of construction that means I have a well rounded expert view on what makes a good suit.
To create any suit there are three factors that must be considered - the cut, the cloth and the craftsmanship. These things are not all evenly weighted in their importance, and I will explain why towards the end.
The Cut.
The cut is what will keep people coming back to see a tailor and define them from others. In the early 20th century suit cuts were much fuller than they are today and this to me is the block of marble that tailors have chiseled away at for the past century, in the natural human pursuit of refinement.
I will make clear that what works for one person will not work for everyone. Bespoke tailors will always have a job because it is a lot about having an eye for proportion. In my experience, a lot can change between each person, so being too specific, such as saying "YoUr TrOuSeRs ShOulD hAve A 13" rISe." Does not work for everyone. Especially if you are 5'7 and quite slim like Elijah Wood who played Frodo Baggins.
So what defines a good cut? I don't want to be too granular, I could easily write a book on this. But a good cut should fall gracefully over the body and express something about the person wearing it. A good cut will make you look elegant, statured, trustworthy and prepared. To me, the ideal cut is something not too distant from where British tailoring was 50/60 years ago. Slightly extended shoulders on a jacket, a gently sweeping waist line, buttoning just below the natural waist, jacket length that coincides between the thumb joint and thumb knuckle, trouser rise that is on the higher side, leg width that is no less than 8" so the hems sit nicely over the shoe (I know that was kind of specific) and of course, a half break for lace ups and "just kissing" for loafers. The result is a clean, classic, elegant silhouette.
Cloth.
I remember the feeling of mystique about cloth when I started training in made-to-measure at Drake's. I had a fantastic mentor who just 'got it'. Cloth was a really big deal when I got to Savile Row. Every time a made-to-measure suit or jacket was commissioned or delivered, or a new ready to wear jacket or suit came in, we would dissect and talk about the cloth. Again, I could write a book on what I now know about cloth, it is fascinating and wonderful. We proudly produce a lot of suiting cloth in the UK still. Another time I will write more about cloth, but for now I will keep this article somewhat 'digestible'.
The main attributes of cloth that can be determined by feel and eye are: design, weave, weight, composition and how the yarn has been spun (to some extent).
Design speaks for itself - it is the way it looks. Plains, Herringbone's, Bird's Eye, Glenn Checks. Prince Of Wales, Donegal Tweed, Shepherd's Tweed, Gun Club Check and Houndstooth, are distinctions in cloth design.
Weave is how its woven - twill or plain weave // does the weave look like diagonal lines or little squares? The weave will change characteristics such as drape and breathability.
Weight is how heavy it is (obviously), usually measured in grams or ounces per square meter, I personally find ounces more intuitive than grams. 10 grams is neither here nor there, where as an ounce / half an ounce is a significant change in characteristics.
Composition can vary in cloth and can usually be deciphered by feel once you are familiar with different types. Wool fabrics usually feel soft and have a top layer that is fibrous depending on clipping after the weaving process. Adding mohair, linen or polyester makes cloth feel more dry and coarse, adding silk makes cloth feel less structured, smooth and gives the appearance of 'slubs' where silk is present in the weave,
How the yarn is spun can be identified slightly by feel, but the merchant is usually going to have to tell you specifically. Single ply, two ply, 3 ply, 4 ply, 6 ply, high-twist. Over time you can get to know this with your hands and with other information such as the weight. Recognising high-twist / tension in fabric is important as it can give an indication to structure when made up and how well it will resist creasing. Cloth that feels springy and lively is going to hold structure and crease less. Very flimsy cloth is going to drape and crease more.
Something to note is that weight is not always relevant to determining the seasonal nature of cloth - lower weight does not mean better for summer. 12-14oz cloth is the standard weight for British suits traditionally, representing the medium to high-end of suiting weight. This weight range provides superb drape as it is full bodied resulting in structure, but somewhat light enough to still drape and flow with ease. Fresco (high-twist / tropical wool) is 11/12oz too, but is more breathable due to its more 'open weave' resulting from how the high twist, multi-ply yarn. Therefore, Fresco will keep you cooler as the air flow is superior, and will give the uniform impression of heavier suiting due to it's springiness resulting from the high-twist multi-ply yarn. This adds and structure where weight is removed. On the other hand, 8.5oz suiting is very fine and therefore less breathable. Ideal when insulation is not important, but not when perspiration is likely. So yes, Fresco though heavier, is going to be better for a wedding in Italy.
This neatly leads on to 'superduper' numbers, as a merchant once termed them to me humorously. You have probably heard of Super 130's or Super 150's, and that is a way of defining how fine the wool is in microns. The higher the number, the finer the wool. This creates luxurious handle and lustre the higher up the scale you ascend. In my experience superduper numbers are not a key indicator of good cloth. Mainly, t signifies how fine the wool is, how expensive the cloth is, it will probably crease a lot and depending on how high the number is, how long it will last.
So what defines a good cloth in a suit? 100% wool always. Around around 10-12oz in weight with bit of bounce and spring in the hand. Ignore superduper numbers, focus on where it is woven (The North and South West of England particularly). This will result in a clean and classic looking suit.
Craftsmanship.
Craftsmanship is to be expected at the highest level of tailoring. It is where the time and money spent by both customer and tailor converge to achieve perfect synergy. Craftsmanship takes form right from the start, measuring and observing a clients posture precisely and thoroughly, preparing the cloth with a hot iron on the bench to become perfectly flat, ready for drafting, translating the client's specifics into a pattern that the tailor effortlessly chalks straight onto the cloth with the same manner as a composer, basting cloth and canvas together so fitting can commence. Fitting, adjusting, fitting, re-adjusting, fitting, readjusting again and again, until they are satisfied with the level of perfection. Then handwork - pad stitching horse-hair canvas, domette chest piece, linen collar and waistband; pressing and shaping the collar and chest canvas with a hot iron, attaching sleeves by hand, hand stitching each buttonhole (approximately 15 in total), hand sewing bar tacks, finishing belt loops and side adjusters by hand, hand attaching the lining into the jacket and trousers. Then a final fitting and maybe one last round after that before the suit is called complete. (One last check of lengths and widths).
Realistically, and these days more practically, multiple crafts people are involved in making a suit - pattern cutters, coat makers, trousers makers and finishers, pressers. It is like a little assembly line.
I intentionally wrote this section to feel tedious to read so that you get a sense of how much time and work goes into a suit that is tailor made. It is a very costly process creating a bespoke suit (not expensive, as it does not take as much as it gives) and it is no wonder that they can cost a lot of money.
No machines, no random emergence, nothing instant, no corners cut, no doubt that it was made to be and will be loved for a lifetime.
So what defines great craftsmanship? It is a mixture of what we see and what we don't see. What we see - the tailor's eye for proportion, their attention to detail in fitting, their hand finishing - buttonholes, bar tacks, pick-stitching, attaching lining, collar, sleeves and hemming. What we don't see - how they problem solve and think, the pad stitching to achieve the perfect roll and chest silhouette, the finishing of seams, all of the hours spent over a bench working to make something special. If the inside is made as beautifully as the outside, trust me when I say, it makes a huge difference to the resulting look and experience of wearing a garment.
Setting The Scene.
Now that you have read this far, it is good to clarify where this is heading. I mentioned at the start about balancing 3 things and eluding to one being the most important above all. We have just clarified that a very good bespoke tailor will balance all three, so how can one be most important? This is not an informative piece about perfection and where to find it - there is plenty of that on the internet already. This article is about what a good suit is. A suit that does not evenly balance all 3 factors to the highest standard, but does balance them in a way that at the average consumer level, will serve you well.
To dive deeper into this, I want to talk about my experience and observations elsewhere before resolving the title of this article - What Makes A Good Suit?
When I worked on Savile Row selling ready to wear, all three elements were prioritised, and the result is an exceptional suit that you can buy off the rack, have altered, and be wearing in around a week for just shy of £2000. It would feature cloth woven in England, horn buttons, a horsehair half floating canvas and hand finishing on the inside as they were unlined.
In the luxury fashion market craftsmanship is foregone and all that remains is the focus on cut or 'style' as it would be called in those parts (usually designed by someone with tailoring knowledge), and the cloth. Luxury brands will emphasis the quality of the fabric used to make their suits because that is the element of luxury. These suits usually have fusing and no canvas (a fast and superficial way to add structure that won't last longterm) and sham buttonholes (not working). In Luxury, how it feels and how it looks are what brands sell.
It gets interesting when you look at the difference between a suit made by a luxury brand and a suit made by an upmarket highstreet upmarket fashion retailer. The product is essentially the same as long as the fabric is 100% wool.
The defining differences in fast fashion, are that cut might be comparable although more 'aestheticised' (some decisions that a fashion designer would make, but a tailor wouldn't), the make is generally the same (no handwork), and the cloth will be at most a wool-polyester blend, or 100% polyester. If it is wool (which sometimes it is), to bring the cost down they will use extremely unethical mulesed wool, which is why you should not buy cheap wool products. Put Simply - it is designed to be very cheap to make and very cheap to buy, by any means necessary.
Conclusion.
Now that we have discussed the three factors that create a suit and assessed the ways that businesses operating in different markets create one for you to buy, what is the most important factor you should look for when buying a good suit?
It is the cloth.
In my experience, no matter how much you spend on a suit the cloth is the most important factor to ensure that a suit looks good and feels good to wear. A good cloth can put to right the sins of a bad quality make, and a poor cloth choice can make even the most well made suit look quite sad.
The suit I am wearing in the image above is from M&S and at least 20 years old. In terms of the construction it is nothing special. It is fused and has no handwork whatsoever. The cloth is doing the heavy lifting to make everything look clean, and the cut speaks for itself. It is from an era where m&S collaborated with British tailors often when developing its lines. So it is bloody good for how much it would have originally cost, let alone how much I paid for it.
When buying a suit that balances all three factors (a fully handmade bespoke suit), you are genuinely paying a lot, for a lot. It is considerately crafted to perfection and can only be done so by having great mentorship, years of experience, and sometimes, a lot of experts to help with cutting, making, finishing and fitting the suit.
Where to go from here?
A suit most can afford can swing very quickly from good, to down right awful, and that's a hard thing to predict when you don't work in the industry and you need to get a suit in a pinch. £150-£200 on a polyester suit is as wasteful as the suit itself.
I have handpicked a selection of vintage good suits in my favorite heritage cuts and made well from good 100% wool cloth. They are available to browse and purchase in my online store and will introduce you to what a good suit is if your budget can't stretch to made-to-measure. There are a variety of names and you might notice that I do have a soft spot for one in particular.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this article.
If you have any feedback or questions I would like to hear it!
