What Is Tack Stitching Purpose And Importance of Tack Stitching in Suit Jackets
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Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno.
I'm the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be answering a reader's question.
He reached out to me and he's asking about tack stitching, basically the stitching that
holds pieces of a new suit, or in some cases, a new shirt.
Basically, whenever you buy clothing, why does it have this extra stitching?
Should I take this off?
Should I remove it?
Do I need to leave it?
I'm going to be answering that question.
But before I get into that, make sure to subscribe to my channel here on YouTube.
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The question that came in is, "Antonio, I've got a quick question.
In regards to tack stitching on clothing, yesterday I've made my first big purchase,"
congratulations, "and I've bought a wonderful, three-quarter length Van Gils top coat in
a blue herringbone pattern," and he's gone into detail about this, but here's the question.
There's a single, long, but not loose stitch across the notch of the lapel and he's wondering
does this need to come off.
Basically, the notches on his lapel are connected to the jacket.
We're often going to see this on pockets as well, up here in the breast pocket.
We'll see this sewn together.
On the back of a jacket, we'll see the vents often sewn together.
And so, he goes into a little bit more detail, but his question is, "Should I cut this out?
Should I remove this?"
Let me explain.
The answer is yes, you need to go ahead and remove that.
If you ever see a gentleman walking around -- especially young men, sometimes they go
off and they'll buy a new suit, they'll buy a new topcoat, they'll buy a new overcoat,
and they won't remove those items.
Think of it as a tag.
Go ahead and you may pull them to the side and say, "You may want to remove that."
But some of them, it's not as obvious.
You open up your pocket here or you try to open it up and there's stitching in there
and it looks like it's actually done pretty well.
So should you just cut through that and have it removed?
If you're ever in doubt, take it to a local tailor.
He'll help you out.
He's not going to judge you and he'll be able to fix it really quickly.
But really, the reasoning for that stitching being there, the reason that you've got the
stitching on the back of the vents and all that stuff is as clothing is moving through
machinery, as it's being packaged, as it's being thrown around, what they don’t want
is for that to get caught on something.
So anything that can be slightly loose, whether it'd be a lapel on a jacket, whether it'd
be pockets on the lower part of the jacket being shut, they do that to prevent damage
to the clothing as it gets to you.
Once it's with you though, you'll remove it.
I've seen guys actually wearing the actual -- they've got a tag right here.
That will be removed.
All of those items, all of that stitching should be removed.
Again, if you're in doubt, go to your local tailor.
That's one of the things I push with on my channel and in my community, is for you guys
to know the name of your local tailor because this is a trusted source.
You can't send things to me -- and I try to get to as many questions as I can, but you
probably have in your town or within a reasonable amount of distance a tailor who you can take
this to and who can solve these problems.
Again, remove the tack stitching.
One of the ways that I use, you can get one of those -- basically it's a stitch remover,
you can buy that for a couple of bucks.
I would be careful if you're going to use an X-ACTO Knife or something like that because
those you can lose a little bit of control and you could actually damage the clothing,
but remove the stitching.
Worst case, if you remove it and you don’t like it, you feel it's opening up too much,
then you can take it to a tailor and have him put it back in.
All right.
Take care, gentlemen, and I'll see you in the next video.
If you've got questions, send them to me over at realmenrealstyle.com.
I've got a contact form there and we read every single question.
We try to get back to as many people as possible and I appreciate your support.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
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