The London Lounge

I'm currently engaged in the mutually educative process of making a bespoke shirt with a young, local tailor/shirt maker. His sewing is solid but experience is lacking. I think that the bulk of the shirts he has sewn were to fit a mannequin. This causes some problems in relation to my build, particularly my rather forward curving shoulders (my tailor also grumbles about these) and it means we're reaching the 5th muslin fitting. First we had the issue with wrinkling around the arm pit, but he has solved this. Now, there's another problem with some wrinkling at the base of the collar parallel to the shoulder seam. Looking at my other shirts, from Edouard Courtot, I realise they sport the same flaw (they were my first bespoke items and I was less attuned to the anatomy of a good fit back then, so I didn't spot it). Unfortunately, I've lend my camera to my sister, so I'll have to use the attached image from Permanent Style to illustrate. I hope you get the idea.

Can anyone enlighten me as to how this might be solved?

(Please don't tell me that I should run for the hills and find a different shirt maker. I realise that this guy is no Duboin, but he's one of the only two places offering bespoke shirts in Denmark and I'd like to support him. If we manage to get around the issues at hand it'll be a twofold victory. I'll get affordable, bespoke shirts that doesn't involve travelling and he'll get experience.)

Is it Gisle Rosenløwe?

I'll have to write Duboin and see if he might come and answer your question. I am not a shirtmaker, but if you have the shoulders you describe that are curved forward..it could be that the shirt lacks sufficient back balance. Do the shirt kick out in back and rise up? Is there a diagonal ridge or wave forming in the ribcage area?

Michael

Groot, you could also bring it to one of the experienced tailors in town (Wennerwald or Undén). I guess they will have an eye for fitting a shirt too.

If he is fitting on a mannequin (and you would be amazed how many tailors do this) and your body includes features like a rounded back, forward curved shoulders, a stooped stance...you could do a thousand muslin fittings and not get it right.

He probably needs to "pass" the back of the shirt "up" and "drop" the front of the shirt "down": to readjust the balance point so there is enough cloth in the back over your shoulders for the cloth to drape properly.

Cheers

Michael

alden wrote:...you could do a thousand muslin fittings and not get it right.

This it what I fear. I don't know if we will ever get beyond initial fitting, but I am not giving up on him just yet.

Thank you for the pointers. I'll give it a try.

If he is making the shirt for the mannequin, you might suggest he put the charge for it on the mannequin's VISA card.

That usually gets the message across effectively.

J.S.Groot, here is an answer to your question from Pierre Duboin himself -- no less! (It seems that he lost his login and password, so asked me to post this reply.)

Pierre Duboin wrote:I’ve draw a shoulder (picture attached)

In blue the old shoulder and in red, the new.

Of course he cut on the red line for this alteration.

I hope it help him.

Andrey

Thanks AndreyB and thank you Monsieur Duboin as well. I will take this to my shirt maker for my next fitting.

cheers!

I know I'm off topic but I like his cufflinks, I wonder where he bought them.

Update:

I visited my shirt maker today for another fitting. As it turns out, I have been mistaken for some or another reason. The problem we are facing is not one of balance or ill fitting shoulder; in fact, both balance and shoulder was near perfect. The issue at hand is more curious, to me at least: To obtain the best relationship of shirt and jacket collar, with regards to how much shirt collar is showing, the collar of my shirt has to be relatively low. This causes two problems. 1) the size of the collar means that is pushes down on the shoulder creating some rumbling (I'm reluctant about reducing the size of the collar because of collar-to-head proportions). B) upon taking on my jacket the shirt collar rides up to where my neck is smaller resulting in the illusion that the collar is a tad too big.

Any opinion on these issues? Up till now, the fittings have been sleeveless. Maybe the sleeves will help prevent the shirt from riding up?

Out of fairness to my shirt maker, by the way, it should be noted that he does not fit shirts on mannequin. It was not my intention to imply this in previous posts, but I see that I might have so now I'm setting the record straight.

Hard to make any very confident assertions based just on the photo you posted, but on the evidence of the shirt in that photo, and your posture, it seems to me that you have a long enough neck for the back collar of the shirt to be worn higher on the neck. If so, you might be trying to solve the wrong problem given that the shirt collar is already being resisted by the spread of the neck into the trapezius. Moving the shirt collar up slightly on the yoke might entail having your tailor raise the collar on your jackets a bit, but this should not be a major problem. If you have forward-sloping shoulders, the jacket collar will probably still hug the neck well at a slightly higher stance. I also have a fairly long neck and my tailors have raised the back collar over time to accommodate a shirt collar height that looks better on my neck.

I'm certainly no shirtmaker so this is mere peanut gallery speculation, but I was puzzled, given the length of neck visible in the photo, by your mention that the shirt collar needs to be relatively low to accommodate your jackets. I'd be interested to hear what other members and artisans have to say on this point.

As noted in the first post, the photo is not of me. Since my own camera is lend out, I borrowed this photo from Simon Crompton's blog Permanent Style.

Anyhow, your considerations are still interesting. My neck is not as long as Mr. Crompton's, but I suppose it could take the collar a bit higher.