The London Lounge

An excellent piece by Tom Mahon that answers a question often posted here regarding matching stripes at the shoulder:

http://www.englishcut.com/archives/000141.html

Good reading

Thanks for the artilcle.

I posed the issue to Mike Cohen, Oxxford's CEO, and Rocco, its head tailor. They indicated that a match is easy at the collar/lapel. However, the match can be very difficult at the shoulder depending upon the stripe. In so many words they gave the same answer as Mr. Mahon. As a general rule Oxxford doesn't match the stripes unless requested by the customer. I have a suit in which the stripes match.

A dissenting opinion on matching is presented by Francis Bown in his article on Johns & Pegg in www.bownsbespoke.com.

Simple math seems to dictate this is impossible. If you require two pieces of material of differring lengths and then shrink the edge of one, how can the lines ever match?

It stands to reason they can only approach a match on someone with very small flat shoulders.

What am I missing?

As regards the mathching of collar/lapel stripes, I think its desirability depends on the particular fabric. With too bold a stripe, it may have a rather intense "op-art" like effect.

Of course, for stripes to match, you must have a situation where, in physics terms, "angle of incidence = angle of reflection". Depending on the collar shape, this may or may not work. So long as there is consistency across both sides, I think either way looks fine.

I saw a jacket on a website (Mr. Beaman's if you must know), with one side matching, and the other not. That looked a little silly to me.

-Eden