RLBL Suit Price - Page 3

How come? I think there are certain sport coats which go best with a plain black trouser, such as those with shades of grey and black that are too busy to be worn with anything but a plain trouser and wouldn't stand out against anything but black. And of course for a less formal environment I could see throwing them on with a sweater every so often.

Traditionally men left black for their evening wear. Im not a fan of these rules either however with a black suit it does make sense because if you just try on a bunch of shit/tie/shoe combos in a store with a black suit it does not look as visually pleasing as midnight navy or dark charcoal.

I think PL has a much softer shoulder than BL, but this is just from personal experience with ones i got to try on, might have been a special model or what not..

It's not really about softness. They both have structured, roped shoulders. However, Black Label tends to have more structure and extension than purple label. They're both nice shoulders.

Here's a picture for comparison. However, these are almost identical.

This is a purple label sport coat made by Caruso (however, this is not a typical Purple Label shoulder):





This is a black label sport coat made by Caruso:

The reason, in my opinion, that the BL suits appear to have a stronger shoulder is the increased waist suppression on those suits. The more pronounced "V" silhouette will make the shoulder appear stronger. If one has the waist area of a PL jacket taken in to BL standards I would imagine you'd get a similar affect.

What about the PL made by St. Andrews?

They're now all made by Caruso, but I think they had (under St. Andrews) and currently have less structure as I believe most of the Caruso made purple label suits are very similar to the St. Andrews ones. I have one of the less structured purple label sport coats (still needs to be tailored) but it's not with me right now. I'll check the shoulders and report back sometime soon (if I remember to ). I think the one pictured above is an exception.

I was not a big fan of the shoulders on the RLBL suit I had.

If you are patient, you will find the suit you want. I had to wait/look around for a couple of months, but I was able to get a recent Isaia base S solid navy suit for under $350 (pre-owned, but absolutely no signs of wear)

TBH if you asked me to guess which one was PL and which one was BL i would not be able to tell with the two you posted up. Btw im loving the pants in both of those outfits. The first one especially.

$700 looks pretty reasonable given its RLBL

I agree staple color (navy) at $700 is good. Those don't last long at those prices. Anything else at that price is decent. If you are a 36 its a steal.

That's the one I was talking about. I liked it a lot more since it looked almost dark charcoal in some lights and at the very least didn't look like it was a half-baked tux or security guard's uniform.

I saw the same suit (today, actually, when walking through the BH store) again and still think it looks just a little bit out of place for most things while the shadow stripe suit (which was also $100 less, IIRC) really looked like it could be worn for business since in some lights it really did look like a super dark grey. I certainly didn't think "pimp suit", though, since the pattern isn't the least gaudy as this isn't a pinstripe at all and the different shades blend quite nicely together rather than providing a pinstripe's sharp contrast. I also thought that the shadow stripe could probably be worn with a cognac shoe, light blue shirt and dark grey wool tie to make it look more daytime appropriate, while the black is really more of an evening item.