Thu Jun 24, 2010 4:07 am
It's very difficult to give accurate advice just from photos, but since no one has stepped up I'll report what I see. Perhaps it may stimulate other members--shirtmakers, if you're lucky--to take issue, or give you points to discuss with your shirtmaker.
1. In my experience only an extremely fitted shirt will hang well when tucked into trousers worn much below the true waist. As you say, if your trousers were worn higher, the excess cloth in the shirt body would be much more likely to stay neatly gathered if held at the body's narrowest point. If you like a very roomy shirt and no back darts, you might pinch two side pleats in the rear (sort of like inverted blade pleats) when you tuck the shirt in, which will help the cloth stay flat and compact under the waistband.
2. That said, the shirt body looks very wide all the way up, front and back. The amount of fullness is a personal choice, but your shoulder seams extend past the point of your shoulder (quite visible in the side shot as the droop over the acromion process); this and the fullness around the shirt body at the armpit means your undersleeve is also cut somewhat away from your actual body. You may experience this as a slight impediment to mobility, or feel it pull in when you put your jacket on.
3. Your trapezius development gives more slope to your shoulders than the shirt appears to be cut for, resulting in diagonal ripples (sagging) between the collar and the armpit, seen from the front. The shirt fronts should hang from the shoulder seams with even vertical tension resulting in a fairly clean fall.
4. In all the photos, your right shoulder is lower than the left (a "down right" in tailorspeak), and you carry your head to that side as well. If this is typical, a bespoke shirt (and jacket) should reflect those facts. In the front-view photo, the diagonal ripples appear more pronounced on your right (viewer's left) side, suggesting that insufficient allowance has been made for the difference in shoulder slope.
5. The shirt cuffs appear to be a little loose, allowing them to slide too far down over the base of your thumbs. Your jacket sleeve length looks good to me, but the cuffs are sitting about 1/4" lower than would look best. It may be that the shirt sleeves themselves are just a touch long as well, but there may still be shrinkage allowance, and if you reduce the shoulder width it will interact with the sleeve length anyway, so I hesitate to say without seeing how the sleeve moves when you bend at the elbow and with the shoulder seam at the actual shoulder joint. (Many men who frequently wear open-collar shirts without jackets have become used to seeing extended shoulders on their shirts, which I think counterproductive when wearing a tie and jacket. When the collar is buttoned, the sleevehead seam should lie over the joint for best mobility and cleanest line.)
There may be front-back balance issues that I can't judge well from photos, and my own taste would run to less fullness in the midsection, but the overall visual effect of the shirt, from the combination of low-riding cuffs, extended shoulders, diagonal ripples from inaccurate shoulder slope, and a full cut with no waist suppression blousing from trouser worn at the hips, is of a shirt that is just slightly too big. If the other points were corrected, some of the fullness in the body would not look or feel so sloppy, if you'll excuse the term, and might be quite acceptable.
Finally, since you've blocked out most of your chin and some of the neck in the photos, it's difficult to assess the height of the front collar band and the shape and size of the points in comparison to your face and neck. If, as seems possible from the second shirt photo, you have a longish face and good length of neck, I'd consider increasing the height of the collar band at the front slightly (an eighth to a quarter of an inch, if it remains comfortable at the adam's apple) and trying a slightly wider spread to the collar, with the current point length (along the front edge of the collar leaf from collar fold to tip) but starting slightly higher on the neck due to the taller band. The back collar height looks fine to me. (The jacket collar height/shape at center back looks just a bit low--it should follow the curve of the shirt collar congruently without flattening in the middle.)
Bear in mind that these observations may be wide of the mark, given that they are deduced from a single set of 2-D photos and made by a member who is not a shirtmaker. But I hope they will give you a starting point for discussion and prove useful. The whole ensemble already looks better than 90% of suit-wearers, so you've made a good start.
