Double-breasted Suit Jacket Vs. Single-breasted Suit Jackets - Difference Between Men's Jacket
Style
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be talking about the difference between a single and a double-breasted jacket.
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All right, this is the question that came in, "Antonio, I was just wondering if you
could explain the difference between single and double-breasted suit jackets and under
which circumstances would you wear one instead of the other."
Let's go ahead and start with the second part of that question first.
Now, there really isn't an event in which you wouldn't be able to wear either a double
or a single-breasted in which a suit is being called for.
Now, I understand that a double-breasted jacket is more of the time going to be associated
with a suit, although you will see double-breasted jackets in blazers and those can, of course,
obviously not be worn -- they're not worn as a suit and they're going to call for a
little bit more formal of trousers.
You wouldn't really want to wear double-breasted blazer with jeans because normally, double-breasted
is a little bit more formal than single-breasted.
But since single-breasted have become so popular throughout the world since World War II and
the double-breasted is really a very small percentage of suits now, most people don't
recognize that distinction.
And so, there isn't really going to be -- the only place I can think is if you attend a
meeting of the society of double-breasted men and everyone is wearing a double-breasted
suit, you might be a little bit out of place if you decide to wear your single-breasted
jacket.
I just made that up.
I have no idea if that society exists, and if it does, I probably won't be becoming a
member because most of my jackets -- in fact, all of them are single-breasted.
Okay, so let's talk about the difference between single-breasted and double-breasted.
Most of us are familiar with single-breasted jackets.
They come in one, two, three, sometimes four or five buttons.
I stay away from those, but the one button, single-breasted jackets mostly in formal wear;
two-button, three-button make up more than 94% of all the jackets out there and that's
what most of us are going to see.
Now, double-breasted, the big thing we're going to notice is that they've got extra
fabric that's going to fold over again from left to right.
We're going to see a larger amount of fabric that folds over and we're going to see two
rows of buttons versus one.
And normally, we're going to have either four total buttons, two on each side, or we're
going to have six, which is actually the classic and the more original.
The four came a little bit later.
Within these, we also see which buttons fasten changes.
So occasionally, we will see when you have three and three, we'll see two fasteners;
sometimes we'll only see one fastener.
And when you've got the two and two, you will also see two fasteners and sometimes one fastener.
Now, whenever you have the one fastener, what that does is it allows the lapel to roll down
lower and that can create the -- this is usually going to be for men who want to appear taller
and what this does is it creates a little bit more of a vertical line going down and
it creates a slight illusion.
The Duke of Kent, I think he's credited with the four-button and with that lower, lower
cut there, but just a little, small style detail.
So that's probably the first thing I should highlight, which is the advantage of the double-breasted
suit, is it's a bit more stylish.
It's a bit more cutting -- a little bit more fashion forward just because so few people
can actually find one and even fewer can actually pull it off because you've got to get the
fit right on the double-breasted.
It's not as forgiving as these single-breasted jackets, so the double-breasted jacket, the
fit has got to be good.
It's going to be more stylish simply because it's going to call for other things, not only
paying attention to how those buttons come together, but also the lapels.
On the lapels, we always see peak lapels on a double-breasted jacket.
Again, that's another reason that it's always considered a bit higher up on the formality
scale.
The last thing I'll say with the double-breasted is it is a little bit less versatile, so there
would be occasions that if you want to give a more casual feel, you're not going to see
double-breasted in sports jackets.
It's kind of like an oxymoron.
A sports a jacket is about as casual of a jacket as we would want to see out there,
while double-breasted, the style of it is going to be for the more formal, higher end
up there.
So to try to mix those, it's like mixing oil and water.
You just don't want to do it.
The blazer, however, is where you will see the double-breasted.
And the blazer, as we've talked about in other videos, is a little bit more formal than the
sports jacket and the suit right up here and black tie right up there, and you can actually
see double-breasted in black tie as well, very rare though.
All right.
Well, hopefully that has helped you understand.
The last thing I will say about double-breasted though is if you go with the six-button configuration,
make sure it looks like a Y.
Never go with the V. If you see a double-breasted suit that has the V buttons basically where
they start farther out and then slowly come in, that is not a classically designed jacket.
It is a small thing that I always look for in a double-breasted.
Again, go for the Y look, not the V look.
Okay.
I'm going to link you to another great article down below on double-breasted suits and jackets
and all that stuff, so if you want to learn more about it, I talk about it in well over
a thousand words right down there.
I'll see you in the next video.
Bye-bye.