Suit Sleeve Buttons Question

[Ranjeev]

I am having a couple of suits altered in terms of sleeve length. I was told that I could keep all four buttons and lose the stitching around the buttons. I'm talking about the stitching that looks like there are working buttons. The other option is to keep the stitching and have the bottom button removed to have only 3 buttons remaining. Any suggestions? I thought it would be possible to keep all 4 buttons and the stitching. The suits are from Harry Rosen if that matters.

 

[j]

How much room is there below the bottom button to the edge, and how much are you shortening them? A lot of tailors and a lot of customers prefer at least 1"-.75" from the edge of the button to the edge of the jacket, but I think it looks fine with less.

 

[whoopee]

1.25" is standard.

 

[muelleran]

Today I picked up a jacket that had it's sleeved altered. Since I bought it from Ebay I went to a local taylor. I was supposed to pick it up last Saturday but when I tried it on I saw that the there were no buttonhole-stitchings, so I refused to pick it up and they agreed that redoing the buttonholes is an integral part of altering the sleeves.
Today I came back and now I have stitches that hint at buttonholes on the sleeves. Since it is a Brioni jacked that is pretty far from what it looked like before. But now that I know what they can do at that shop I am sure they can't do better.

On the other hand when I bought a similar jacked at a lokal shop they also altered the sleeves for me and most certainly the buttonholes looked just the way they did before. That should go without saying.

Bottom line: If it is an expensive jacked I would find someone who can redo the stitching properly and don't believe anyone who tells me it cannot be done.

 

[Ranjeev]

Thanks for the info gents. There is no question looking at the sleeves that if buttons were left as they are after the alteration, they would be too close to the end of the sleeve. I thought that adding stitching to one button (the one moved from the bottom of the buttons to the top) would be fairly easy. I'll talk to the guys at Harry Rosen and see what they say. If the choice is between having 3 buttons or losing the stitching , is there any protocol? Both suits are 3 button.