So you’ve got something coming up suit styles and you’re standing in front of a rack of navy jackets that all look more or less identical, while someone tells you about the fabric weight. The fabric is not the thing. What decides whether you look good in that jacket is whether the shoulder seam lands on the edge of your shoulder or an inch out past it, because almost everything else on a suit can be changed later and the shoulders really can’t, at least not for money worth spending.
Keep that in the back of your mind and the rest of these decisions get a lot easier.
The Go-To Collection
Whether you buy or rent depends on how often you’ll wear the thing, and most people get this backwards.
A charcoal or navy suit earns its price over years of use, so buying makes sense. A patterned emerald jacket you’ll wear twice does not, and renting it costs a fraction of owning it. The line falls somewhere around three wearings.
What actually matters when you’re picking where to shop, whichever way you go:
- Do they carry more than one fit in your size, or just slim and regular in name only
- Can you try it on before you commit, or are you guessing off a size chart
- Do they build alteration time into the timeline
- What happens if it arrives wrong
Rental services vary a lot on those four. Some, like the Generation Tux Collection, run a home try-on before your actual order ships, which handles the sizing guess. Others don’t, and you find out on delivery day.
That last point is the one people skip and then regret. Alterations typically run one to three weeks, so a suit that shows up four days before the event leaves you no room to fix anything at all.
For the Business Professional
Navy and charcoal handle almost everything, and black is the one most people assume is safest when it’s actually the weakest of the three for daytime.
Black reads formal in a funeral direction rather than an authoritative one, and under office lighting it tends to go flat instead of showing any depth. Navy and charcoal both hold their character under fluorescents and take a wider range of shirts and ties.
Go with a two-piece in a tailored cut, white or pale blue shirt, tie that doesn’t announce itself. Then two details that quietly separate a good outfit from a sloppy one.
- Sleeve length. Your jacket cuff should sit so a quarter to a half inch of shirt cuff shows. Less than that and the jacket looks borrowed. More and the proportions go strange.
- Trouser break. Light break on the shoe, or none. Fabric pooling over your laces is the most common reason an expensive suit photographs badly, and it’s a twenty dollar hem to fix.
Wedding Wonders
Season does more work here than trend does.
Summer ceremonies take lighter grays, tans and soft blues, partly because they photograph better in daylight and partly because lighter wools actually breathe. That goes double for intimate outdoor weddings, where you’re standing in open sun for the ceremony and nobody’s air conditioning is going to save you. Linen is the wildcard, since it wrinkles by the reception no matter what you do, and some people find that charming and some people find it sloppy, so decide which camp you’re in before you buy rather than after.
Winter and evening weddings go the other way. Deep blue, burgundy, forest green all pick up richness in low light, and heavier cloth hangs better when it’s cold anyway. Velvet jackets and satin lapels both work here without being loud about it.
One order of operations, though. If you’re a guest or a groomsman, ask whoever is running the wedding before you commit to velvet or a strong color, because the couple may have a scheme you don’t know about. If you’re the groom, it’s your call and nobody gets to argue.
Black-Tie Brilliance
Is a midnight blue tuxedo actually better than black, or does it just sound better?
There’s a real reason behind it and it goes back about a century. Under candlelight and early electric lighting, black wool throws off a greenish or grayish cast, while very dark blue holds its richness instead. Men were complaining about exactly this in the 1920s, and the cloth that fixed it got described as blacker than black. The Duke of Windsor wore it, Hollywood picked it up because it photographed better under studio lighting, and by the late thirties midnight blue was ahead of black for evening dress.
Most venues still light rooms in a way that makes this true. Midnight blue reads darker and richer than black, and it keeps definition in your lapels and seams rather than collapsing into a silhouette.
Past the color, black tie is fixed and there isn’t much room to improvise:
- Peak or shawl lapel, grosgrain or satin
- Bow tie, self-tied if you can manage it
- Patent leather or very polished black shoes
- No belt, ever. Cummerbund or waistcoat covers the waistband
- Ventless jacket for the cleanest line
Cufflinks, studs and a white pocket square finish it, and silver photographs better than gold under a flash.
Stylish Semi-Formal
This is the category people overdress for most often, mainly because nobody defines it clearly.
Texture is what does the work. Tweed, flannel and hopsack all read less formal than smooth worsted while still reading like a suit, and linen covers the summer version. A patterned shirt or a knit tie brings it down a step further without tipping into casual. Loafers or derbies rather than oxfords, and this is the one situation where brown shoes are the better call rather than a compromise.
The Trendsetter
Emerald, cobalt, wide lapels, double-breasted, cropped trousers. All fine, all fun, and all carrying the same caveat.
A bold suit is the least reusable thing you can buy. Charcoal goes to forty events without anyone noticing. A patterned green jacket goes to two before people recognize it. That’s not a reason to skip the fashion-forward look, it’s a reason to rent that one and own the plain one.
Fit Is King
No matter how stylish your suit is, the fit is where the money actually goes, and almost nobody publishes these figures next to the style advice.
| Work | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Basic hemming, simple sleeve adjustment | $60 to $150 |
| Waist taken in, trousers resized, sleeves shortened | $150 to $300 |
| Shoulder reconstruction | $200 to $400 and up, often refused |
| Full off-the-rack tailoring package | $75 to $200 |
Location moves these a lot. Mid-size markets sit in that $150 to $300 band for standard work, while suit styles tailors in Manhattan or Los Angeles can run past $800 for the same job, which is why driving out to a suburban shop is a real way to cut the bill.
Now the constraints, because a tailor isn’t a magician.
- Shoulders. The seam should sit exactly at the edge of your shoulder. Recutting one means dismantling the jacket’s structure, and the cost often exceeds what the suit is worth, so plenty of tailors just decline the job.
- Chest. Most jackets hide about half an inch of adjustment in those seams. Past that you’re into reconstruction.
- Sleeves. One to two inches of seam allowance and that’s it. If you need more length than that, it doesn’t exist in the garment. Working buttonholes complicate this further, since the tailor has to shorten from the shoulder rather than the cuff.
- Sizing generally. One to two sizes is the realistic window, and taking a suit in works much better than letting one out. So when you’re between two sizes, take the larger. Fabric comes off easily and never appears from nowhere.
Patterned cloth is its own problem. Plaids, windowpanes and stripes lose their alignment at the seams under heavy alteration, and keeping them matched takes a good tailor and more hours than you’d expect.
Spend a hundred to two hundred on tailoring a five hundred dollar suit styles and it reads like a suit that cost twice as much. Skip it on a two thousand dollar suit and it won’t.
A Suit That Fits Beats a Suit That Cost More
Whatever the occasion, the sequence is the same every time. Find the jacket whose shoulders sit right styles, spend a bit at the tailor, then worry about color.
Everything in this article past that point is preference. The fit part isn’t.