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HOF: What Are You Wearing Right Now - Part III

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Citan1145

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Superfluous

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Hmmmm...where do I start?
1. That jacket is not a 3/2, nor is it a "natural shoulder" either in the old specific Brooks Brothers sense or in the wider sense of having the entire curve of the shoulder seam into the crown knocked (ironed) flat. If you look at the arms crossed shot, it will be apparent to you that this is done pretty much the same as shoulders that some of you call "roped." The ridge is not as prominent, but basically, it is the same as most jackets made today.
2. While Spoo's hand is in one pocket, that jacket is already pulling at the waist. It has the tell-tale X at the fastening point, and a collapse of the pattern into the center. It does not need more "waist suppression," a term that nearly all of you use for simply taking in the sides at the seam. It might benefit from being let out, actually, not taken in, at the sides, but probably does not need it.
Many current active SF members prefer a jacket frontal silhouette in which there is a larger apparent shoulder:waist ratio and a square shoulder. Because heavy padding is "out of style" right now, you see tons of photographs (especially from the retail menswear world, Pitti, etc.) in which there are attempts (largely failing) to obtain that ratio by over-winching the waist. This looks horrible to me, so I would be the last to encourage anyone to go in such a direction. A jacket that catches at the waist is not a jacket that fits, nor would it seem likely to be a jacket that is comfortable to wear.
I think that it would be useful for many of you to think of this jacket Spoo is wearing today. I'm with those who prefer it to his others, but I also understand it undermines an artificiality of affect (e.g., a more padded, squarer shoulder offsetting the width of hips) that many of you associate and admire about a large number of Spoo's "fits." Neither viewpoint is correct or incorrect, it is entirely a matter of opinion.
Understand, however, that the other look comes not primarily from shrinkwrapping but from augmenting/squaring at the shoulders through various techniques. It's like falsies.


You're right, it does look slightly roped, however, it also looks very unstructured unlike his others. You may like it better without a dramatic drop, but a dramatic drop from a structured shoulder and taken in side along with some creases/pull looks a lot more interesting than a "properly" fit jacket. Even then, a little crinkle and pull keeps it interesting.
 

XKxRome0ox

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Buy the suit, Romeo. That looks like a really good initial fit. Also, I find that once BB sales get around 40% that usually means they're down to the last few pieces in each size.


yea it's almost perfect off the rack .. i was very surprised
i wouldn't even take in the waist any more
just shorten the sleeves and add buttons, let out the seat a bit, and hem the pants and done
basic alterations all included for free

but it's still $600+tax
i feel like i can do better than that for a brooks brothers suit
 
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LA Guy

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fwiw, I agree with Corbera. There are much better ways of getting that V shaped silhouette than wearing too tight jackets (something, I have to admit, of which I have been guilty.) I think that the best example of how to do it right is the Huntsman jacket. The one button, accentuated shoulders, swelled chest and pinched, but not pull, waist, all give you a good, strong, silhouette, and in a good way. Not sure what RTW line does this. Tom Ford, to some degree, maybe, and Dolce&Gabbana.

But, no fit pics from me. This is a PSA. We now have a Facebook page, after the bastards took down the original one because "Styleforum net is not a real person". Um, corporations are sorta people. So anti-American. Anyway, we are starting again. If you want to get the DL on events, blog posts, etc... without having to wade through pages and pages of banter, you will be able to find it here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Styleforum/120371724751422

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niidawg3

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You're right, it does look slightly roped, however, it also looks very unstructured unlike his others. You may like it better without a dramatic drop, but a dramatic drop from a structured shoulder and taken in side along with some creases/pull looks a lot more interesting than a "properly" fit jacket. Even then, a little crinkle and pull keeps it interesting.


:confused:
 
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lastdonb

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yea it's almost perfect off the rack .. i was very surprised
i wouldn't even take in the waist any more
just shorten the sleeves and add buttons, let out the seat a bit, and hem the pants and done
basic alterations all included for free
but it's still $600+tax
i feel like i can do better than that for a brooks brothers suit

Thrift it....
 

F. Corbera

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You're right, it does look slightly roped, however, it also looks very unstructured unlike his others. You may like it better without a dramatic drop, but a dramatic drop from a structured shoulder and taken in side along with some creases/pull looks a lot more interesting than a "properly" fit jacket. Even then, a little crinkle and pull keeps it interesting.


How "structured" a shoulder has no direct relation to how it "looks" specifically on a static jacket. A heavily padded/shoulder can look "natural" or square...when the man isn't moving.

A completely unstructured, upadded shoulder can also look "natural" or square...based on, guess what? what the actual shoulder underneath is.

A man with a healthy, natural drop, with even and slightly sloped shoulders, can wear pretty much anything. A man who is a beanpole (or a pineapple) can be tailored to look approximately the same when completely still. The minute that heavily augmented man moves, however, and goes about the business of the day, those shoulders will look like ping pong tables on either side of his neck, rocking to and fro, queasily independent of his body.

The subterfuge, then, is up. It is obvious to the world that you have no game: instead, you have padding, like a padded bra or pants with the ass foam inserts (cue Barry Manilow reference.)

A particularly humorous account of this phenomena is given unconsciously by Reevolving in his sports bar thread, in which he regales us on the reaction of a woman when he puts his elbows up on the back of a bar stool.

Am I biased and exaggerating? Of course. I do so to make my point clear.

Now, getting back to Spoo for a second, many of you seemed to have daydreamed up a concept of his physique which contradicts his own description of his height and weight. He is slim, even skinny. He is not at an athletic weight (strong like LA Guy), although being slim is great for the sport of wearing tailored clothes. Many of his jackets swim at the shoulders, are constricted in the chest, and are too tight at the waist. The human torso is not naturally a round cylinder; so too with Spoo. He's well-shouldered, thin waisted, but also somewhat wide-hipped (bones, not the 5cm pizza problem.) That is what you are seeing revealed in the jacket from yesterday.

If you square out his shoulders to balance the hips, you have succeeded in one dimension and in a static pose. Your success, however, compromises everything else. If you bring in the middle at the side seams to exaggerate this effect further, then the jacket will not be (or will be less often) fluid on the torso when buttoned. It will "stick" like a lifesaver around your belly.

Instead, if you take the basic form of yesterday's jacket, widen the lapels toward the notch, lower the gorge, shorten the jacket, and cut open the fronts more, you would probably accomplish everything needed to balance shoulders-to-hips while still retaining the fluidity of the jacket. You've all seen this kind of cut before because it is all over the Internet in the form of the Liverano stuff that Cho and Crew carry (or facilliate when it is bespoke) and from several other makers like NSM, etc.

As for your last point about purposefully misfitting things to make it more "interesting," I really have no reaction to that point of view since it implies nothing can be wrong or right. If that really really is the belief system that has captured this thread and the Mens Clothing forum in general, then no wonder some of us feel alienated from it.
 
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DocHolliday

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This is interesting to me, in that Spoo's build, I suspect, is rather similar to mine. Yet the effect of our clothes is entirely different. But I'd put more emphasis on the role of the chest fullness than Vox has explicitly referenced. Spoo and I part ways from the get-go, in that the sort of narrow chest he has tended to favor is a deal-killer for me. I like a full chest, to accommodate the sort of crude waist-cinching Vox decries. But I don't want pulling at the button, and I don't care for artificial shoulder augmentation. So I've ended up with a sort of modified Trad look, knocking out the volume of the sack coat at the waist while preserving the shoulder. Perhaps my tastes are irreconcilable?
 

acridsheep

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How "structured" a shoulder has no direct relation to how it "looks" specifically on a static jacket. A heavily padded/shoulder can look "natural" or square...when the man isn't moving.
A completely unstructured, upadded shoulder can also look "natural" or square...based on, guess what? what the actual shoulder underneath is.
A man with a healthy, natural drop, with even and slightly sloped shoulders, can wear pretty much anything. A man who is a beanpole (or a pineapple) can be tailored to look approximately the same when completely still. The minute that heavily augmented man moves, however, and goes about the business of the day, those shoulders will look like ping pong tables on either side of his neck, rocking to and fro, queasily independent of his body.
The subterfuge, then, is up. It is obvious to the world that you have no game: instead, you have padding, like a padded bra or pants with the ass foam inserts (cue Barry Manilow reference.)
A particularly humorous account of this phenomena is given unconsciously by Reevolving in his sports bar thread, in which he regales us on the reaction of a woman when he puts his elbows up on the back of a bar stool.
Am I biased and exaggerating? Of course. I do so to make my point clear.
Now, getting back to Spoo for a second, many of you seemed to have daydreamed up a concept of his physique which contradicts his own description of his height and weight. He is slim, even skinny. He is not at an athletic weight (strong like LA Guy), although being slim is great for the sport of wearing tailored clothes. Many of his jackets swim at the shoulders, are constricted in the chest, and are too tight at the waist. The human torso is not naturally a round cylinder; so too with Spoo. He's well-shouldered, thin waisted, but also somewhat wide-hipped (bones, not the 5cm pizza problem.) That is what you are seeing revealed in the jacket from yesterday.
If you square out his shoulders to balance the hips, you have succeeded in one dimension and in a static pose. Your success, however, compromises everything else. If you bring in the middle at the side seams to exaggerate this effect further, then the jacket will not be (or will be less often) fluid on the torso when buttoned. It will "stick" like a lifesaver around your belly.
Instead, if you take the basic form of yesterday's jacket, widen the lapels toward the notch, lower the gorge, shorten the jacket, and cut open the fronts more, you would probably accomplish everything needed to balance shoulders-to-hips while still retaining the fluidity of the jacket. You've all seen this kind of cut before because it is all over the Internet in the form of the Liverano stuff that Cho and Crew carry (or facilliate when it is bespoke) and from several other makers like NSM, etc.
As for your last point about purposefully misfitting things to make it more "interesting," I really have no reaction to that point of view since it implies nothing can be wrong or right. If that really really is the belief system that has captured this thread and the Mens Clothing forum in general, then no wonder some of us feel alienated from it.


I love you.
 
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ctp120

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WRT the visual appearance of "waist suppression" and the stylistic preferences for certain shoulder shapes and jacket structure: they're really rather unrelated.

The waist on my jacket in the pic below is significantly "suppressed," but I doubt anyone would accuse it of looking firmly structured or having strong shoulders (even though there are pads in the shoulder, just subtle, rounded ones). Notice that there is definitely a visible difference in the shoulder width : waist ratio.


Here is a very structured coat with roped shoulders which belongs to Jeffery Diduch. The fit is impeccable, and I imagine the coat is very comfortable; it certainly hangs beautifully on his frame. The waist is very shaped (like Vox, I hesitate to say "supressed" because of how that term is thrown around here). Notice the complete absence of any pulling or the sausage casing effect which causes the coat to rest its weight at points along his midsection.


To illustrate that I myself once preferred styling cues very different from my current preferences, here's a pic of one of my old suits which I no longer wear. You'll also notice how inferior the fit is to the other two coats pictured above. This however, is not a reflection of the styling cues (hard/soft, structured/unstructured); it just fits poorly.


I do think that styling cues create different silhouettes which better suit certain tastes, but far too often this is conflated with fit. Hopefully this post illustrates that to some extent.
 
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Rambo

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^ wow, thank you! I'm a bit tied up and can't give the proper verbal reply I'd like to, but here is a robot pose I didn't post yesterday if it helps clarify anything:
69e04894.jpg


I'm with Vox on this. Doesn't need waist suppression. Do you normally have a dropped left shoulder? Or was that just the pose.
 

Threadbearer

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I don't understand this angle thing on the self timer yet. used a crappy picture to show fit a bit better from a front on angle. Also, shoulder does not ripple standing normally. Flash exaggerates colors close.


I have come to trust mirror over camera in matters of color but camera over mirror in matters of fit.
 

RDiaz

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How "structured" a shoulder has no direct relation to how it "looks" specifically on a static jacket. A heavily padded/shoulder can look "natural" or square...when the man isn't moving.
A completely unstructured, upadded shoulder can also look "natural" or square...based on, guess what? what the actual shoulder underneath is.
A man with a healthy, natural drop, with even and slightly sloped shoulders, can wear pretty much anything. A man who is a beanpole (or a pineapple) can be tailored to look approximately the same when completely still. The minute that heavily augmented man moves, however, and goes about the business of the day, those shoulders will look like ping pong tables on either side of his neck, rocking to and fro, queasily independent of his body.
The subterfuge, then, is up. It is obvious to the world that you have no game: instead, you have padding, like a padded bra or pants with the ass foam inserts (cue Barry Manilow reference.)
A particularly humorous account of this phenomena is given unconsciously by Reevolving in his sports bar thread, in which he regales us on the reaction of a woman when he puts his elbows up on the back of a bar stool.
Am I biased and exaggerating? Of course. I do so to make my point clear.
Now, getting back to Spoo for a second, many of you seemed to have daydreamed up a concept of his physique which contradicts his own description of his height and weight. He is slim, even skinny. He is not at an athletic weight (strong like LA Guy), although being slim is great for the sport of wearing tailored clothes. Many of his jackets swim at the shoulders, are constricted in the chest, and are too tight at the waist. The human torso is not naturally a round cylinder; so too with Spoo. He's well-shouldered, thin waisted, but also somewhat wide-hipped (bones, not the 5cm pizza problem.) That is what you are seeing revealed in the jacket from yesterday.
If you square out his shoulders to balance the hips, you have succeeded in one dimension and in a static pose. Your success, however, compromises everything else. If you bring in the middle at the side seams to exaggerate this effect further, then the jacket will not be (or will be less often) fluid on the torso when buttoned. It will "stick" like a lifesaver around your belly.
Instead, if you take the basic form of yesterday's jacket, widen the lapels toward the notch, lower the gorge, shorten the jacket, and cut open the fronts more, you would probably accomplish everything needed to balance shoulders-to-hips while still retaining the fluidity of the jacket. You've all seen this kind of cut before because it is all over the Internet in the form of the Liverano stuff that Cho and Crew carry (or facilliate when it is bespoke) and from several other makers like NSM, etc.
As for your last point about purposefully misfitting things to make it more "interesting," I really have no reaction to that point of view since it implies nothing can be wrong or right. If that really really is the belief system that has captured this thread and the Mens Clothing forum in general, then no wonder some of us feel alienated from it.


Thank you very much for this valuable information. It will help for sure!
 
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