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Jacket sleeve length

Fanthom

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Hi.

I have purchased a sports jacket from Kenzo. The fabric (black, cotton) is quite "dressy", it has three flap pockets, and no vents. The sleeves has no buttons.

What is the proper sleeve length for such a jacket?

I'll wear it mostly, but not always, with a shirt. If I shorten the sleeves to show a half inch of shirt sleeve, won't it look funny when I wear the jacket with a t-shirt?

Thanks,
Marcus
 

Steve B.

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Marcus:

IMHO, 1/4" is about all the shirt length you should show.
 

LA Guy

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I guess you need to choose your poison. Actually, you can have the best of both worlds. I like to wear my sleeves long. I am not tall (5' 11''), but am fairly slender, and have long arms, and I feel that a longer, slightly flared (French) cuff accentuates the streamlined, Hedi Slimane style, silhouette. Since my cuffs are about 1/4" to 1/2" longer than is usual, my jackets can be correspondingly longer - and they (the jackets) don't look strange if I'm not wearing a long sleeve shirt.

I would seriously re-think wearing jackets with a tee-shirt though. Sports jackets and blazers, despite what the fashion mavens want you to think, pair naturally with a contrasting collared shirt, and you most guys who ditch the latter often end up looking like they forgot to do the laundry. If you want to wear the jacket casually, wear it with a unbuttoned, slim shirt over a vintage tee. I personally think that a pair of flat front pinstripe or shadow plaid pants rounds this out nicely, but that's just my personal preference.
 

bengal-stripe

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There is a natural length for the sleeve: the point where arm and hand join. The sleeve should come down to this hinge, thus covering the knucklebone. That is still the length any bespoke tailor would fix you sleeves to. Showing of the shirt cuff comes than on top of that.
But shirt cuff on it's own is not precise, as jacket as well as shirt might be both to long or to short.
 

Fanthom

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Thanks for the replies.

LA Guy: My build is similar to yours, and it is a good idea with extra long shirt sleeves. Guys with short arms should probably have shorter jacket sleeves, and hence showing more cuff, to make the arms look longer. T-shirts was a bad example (I am not going for the Miami Vice look), but I may wear the jacket with e.g. a turtleneck. Since you mention it - I have a pair of charcoal pinstripe flatfront wool pants which I love and like to wear casually (mostly in winter). Sometimes I do feel, however, that they are too "dressy", and I try to dress them down (with e.g. a black turtleneck).

To end with the original topic, something I read (maybe in Roetzel's book?) which is very true comes to mind: if the jacket sleeves are too long, the jacket will look too big no matter how good the jacket fits otherwise.

Marcus
 

Joe G

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From your description of the jacket, I think I've seen it. With that kind of more avant garde jacket, I would actually not recommend showing any cuff. If the sleeves are a bit long (as Helmut Lang shows on the runways) that's fine.

As for the sportcoat and t-shirt thing, don't be cowed. I'll do it, for example today I wore a black 3-button sportcoat with a chocolate brown T, jeans and brown bowling shoes.

And the standard "upscale Bohemian" look for decades has been blazer or black sportcoat, white-T, and whatever shoes one happens to be wearing. There's nothing Miami Vice about it. Indeed, you're more likely to see that look in London-SoHo or Berlin-Mitte than Miami....

Peace,

JG
 

LA Guy

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I think that while its perfectly acceptable for select people to wear a blazer with jeans, a tee-shirt, and sneakers, you should be careful to makes sure you are among the few before adopting the look.

Done right (first of all, you need to be tall and slender, with "messy" hair) with boot cut jeans and a plain or vintage tee, and with either boots (chelsea or cowboy for the truely brave) or sneakers, you can look pretty damn good. On the other hand, get just one thing wrong (be it your build to your boots) and the whole thing falls apart. A lot of guys (I saw a lot of this in Germany last year) wore some variant of this to ill effect. Most common mistakes: tight jeans, substituting the chunky shoes (square toe or round toe, its doesn't matter) for boots or sneakers, wearing a dress belt with the jeans.

BTW - note to Joe G. I used to really like Jil Sander as well, but in the last year, I've bought just one piece from the label. You're right. The quality has really gone down. I don't find that the same is true of Helmut Lang. It's really sad, because I always thought of Helmut and Jil as the bulwark against the truly horrendous fashion sense of most Germans. And Paul Smith and his PS line is terrific.
 

Joe G

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Done right (first of all, you need to be tall and slender, with "messy" hair) with boot cut jeans and a plain or vintage tee, and with either boots (chelsea or cowboy for the truely brave) or sneakers, you can look pretty damn good. Â On the other hand, get just one thing wrong (be it your build to your boots) and the whole thing falls apart. Â A lot of guys (I saw a lot of this in Germany last year) wore some variant of this to ill effect. Â Most common mistakes: Â tight jeans, substituting the chunky shoes (square toe or round toe, its doesn't matter) for boots or sneakers, wearing a dress belt with the jeans. BTW - note to Joe G. I used to really like Jil Sander as well, but in the last year, I've bought just one piece from the label. Â You're right. Â The quality has really gone down. Â I don't find that the same is true of Helmut Lang. Â It's really sad, because I always thought of Helmut and Jil as the bulwark against the truly horrendous fashion sense of most Germans. Â And Paul Smith and his PS line is terrific.
A few notes: 1) Interesting comments about blazers/sportcoats with T-shirts. Still, even though I don't fit all of your qualifications (I'm tall but more V-shaped than slender, and I'll pair it with everything from black boots to brown bowling shoes to brown suede Gucci-bit loafers) I like the look. I do get the feeling that your comments were meant a bit for white folks. 2) Maybe I'm overreacting to HL a bit, but his stuff used to be really impeccable. Now, except for that coat with the leather band on it, of which I was impressed with the materials and workmanship quality, his clothes' materials and craftmanship strikes me as glaringly average. His cashmere jumpers for F01/W02, for example, could have been on the rack at Banana Republic. I'd rather go to Zara and save hundreds of bucks. 3) Small point, but one my gf would insist I make. HL is Austrian, not German. Looking from far away, it doesn't seem to make much difference, but here in Vienna it's definitely two peoples separated by a common language... 4) Is Wolfgang Joop. available in the LA or NYC? I've seen the fragrances but I can't recall if I've ever seen the clothes. At any rate, if you can find it, check it out. His shirts are made by Jacques Britt, an excellent old-line German shirtmaker. (At least, the paper lining them has that name all over it... Â
wink.gif
) Germans also tend to do accessoires well. I like a lot of German glasses, for example, such as Freudenhaus and ic.-berlin. I also like Silhouette, although they're Austrian. Â
smile.gif
Peace, JG
 

LA Guy

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My bad about Helmut Lang - Austrian, of course. I know my Austrian friends would crucify me for that. The one Helmut Lang piece from last season that I liked was a camel colored moleskin jacket. I didn't end up getting it, since my Asian complexion just doesn't take tans very well, but nevertheless.

I haven't seen Joop. clothing in the States, which is a little surprising given how popular he seems in Germany. Of course, we don't have Toni Gardi either, or a thousand other brands. Interestingly enough, I find that German and Swiss houses are much better represented in Canada than in the States (Strellson, Signum, etc...) I think that this is because the market in the States for moderately priced brands are pretty well dominated by domestic brands like Kenneth Cole and DKNY, (Hugo Boss being the exception), while the Canadian luxury market is significantly smaller, and consequently, the midrange market a little stronger. I haven't done any numbers on this, but that's my hunch.

Yes, my comments were a little directed to the Caucasians. Sorry, its just that Caucasians seem to have a much higher per capita of poor dressers than persons of Asian or African descent, although they also dominate the "best dressed" class.
 

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