Men's Suit Jackets & Proportion - Understanding Suit Jacket Fit Needs Of Small Men - Style
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Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be talking about jacket proportions for the smaller men.
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All right, this is the question that came in.
"Antonio, I had a question about blazers and sports coats.
I'm a pretty small guy.
I'm 5'7", 140 lbs, and I don't have broad shoulders.
I've noticed that jackets for the most part make my shoulders look really big, but not
in a good way.
They look really squared and unnatural.
I was wondering what I should do.
Do you think I could have the shoulder pads removed or is there some way my tailor can
make the jacket look nice?
Let me know what you think and if you need more information, just let me know."
Well, I think I've got enough information just to be able to tell you that it sounds
like the proportions on this jacket are wrong for you.
So as a smaller man, you're going to face a number of issues, but the biggest thing,
the hidden thing is that you need clothing that is made for your proportions, so it doesn’t
sound like you're exceptionally short.
It sounds like you're really thin.
And in that case, what you're going to run into is you're going to have narrow shoulders.
And I don't know about the size of your head, but the first issue is going to be making
sure that your shoulders in proportion to your head that that looks right.
So you are going to want shoulders possibly that are built out just a bit, but you don't
want them built up like a linebacker.
And it sounds like maybe a lot of these jackets that you're getting, they're already overbuilt,
so that's probably one of the first issues.
Let's assume that your head actually and your shoulders are pretty well sized.
Maybe you've got a little bit thinner of a face and that actually matches your body well.
So in this case, you're going to want to go for a more natural look on the shoulder, a
much softer shoulder built.
Now, this is hard to find on many off-the-rack suits mostly because they're just throwing
in some -- usually on a higher quality shoulder pad, you're going to see they're going to
take cotton and they're going to pad it together and hand-make this depending on the build
and where it's made.
On mass manufactured ones though, they're going to use foam.
The problem with foam is over time, it does actually lose its life and they make it to
fit a hundred different body types and therefore, it fits nobody well.
So with the foam ones, oftentimes they're going to make you look over big and even if
you're tailor went in and he removed this, it's still going to have too much material
there.
I would say take it to your tailor, see what he can do, but working on the shoulders of
a jacket, it's kind of like heart surgery when it comes in a tailoring world, so it's
something that I'd be very careful of and it might be a bit too expensive.
What I would look at is look for an entirely different style of jacket.
I would look for a style of a jacket that maybe is coming out of Italy or Japan where
you've got a lot of men who have builds similar to you.
They're thin.
They're not exceptionally short, but they're really thin.
And so, these jackets are going to be made proportionally right because other things
with the jacket, let's say you did get those shoulders right, you're going to start to
notice that perhaps is it a three-button jacket because technically, you probably are going
to look better in a two-button or even a one button jacket because of your proportion and
of your height.
In addition, how are the sleeves?
Are the sleeves thinner or do you have a huge armhole there?
And if that armhole is too big, then no matter what you do on the shoulders, it's going to
look disproportional because you're going to have these big areas right there next to
your arms.
Let's look at the length of the jacket and how it fits in the hips and in the torso.
Could you actually bring this in?
At the end of the day, you want a jacket that's built more for a delicate physique, so you
want even the pockets, these front flap pockets here, you want them a little bit smaller,
a little bit shorter, so all of this plays into your lapels.
You probably want those thinner.
Again, I'm hitting on all this because I want to point out that your current jacket is probably
not going to cut it.
My advice, again, to look for brands that are coming out of Italy, that are coming out
of Japan, and those are going to be two countries that a lot of men wear suits there.
It may be a little bit harder.
You may have to look on eBay.
You may have to actually go to a specialty store and get an understanding.
And just because you walk into the store and they sell $2000 Italian suits, you don't have
to buy the suit.
I know that may not be in your budget, but what this does is it gives you an idea of
what's out there.
You can try it on.
You can get, "Wow!
This is Zegna," or this other type of brand is perfect for me, but the price obviously
isn't, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to look around.
I'm going to find something that is close or something that maybe -- you know, in Italy,
there's a lot of knock-off brands.
Again, if you know how to shop on eBay, you can find these.
You may have to go to the Italian version of eBay or just put it out there, but the
big thing to hit on with you, it's all about proportion.
It's about knowing that oftentimes, these bigger jackets are made to fit bigger, more
square men, and you're probably not going to be able to adjust that jacket.
I would look for an entirely different style, do a lot of thrifting.
I talked about this in the other videos and I think you can get some help there.
I wish you the best of luck because I know it's a hard body to fit, which is why custom
clothiers like myself actually have business, but I know not everyone's in the budget for
it, so keep looking.
Again, Italy, Japan, I can't think of any other countries.
I'd love to hear from you guys down on the comments about what you think this gentleman
should be able to do.
I know here in the United States, it's a tough body to fit.
I wish you the best and I will see you guys in the next video.
Bye-bye.