"Tightness"

[schneidergott]

There are 3 basic versions of "fit", tight, regular and loose, each one with variations and all seen and felt differently by the wearer, so "the one and only fit" does not exist.
But all should have one thing in common: A good balance!
By balance I mean the way the garment hangs on the wearer. Ideally it would give a clean picture, both in front and back. The balance depends on many factors. So even if you get the length of back and front right, there is still the issue of width, shoulder slope, collar.
A badly set in sleeve can ruin an otherwise well fitting garment (set in too high or to low, also known as sleeve pitch).

For cutting, the tailor has a few guidelines he can follow, so certain features should have a satisfactory result already, but might lack just a little bit of fine tuning.
The more experienced the team of tailor and customer is (or gets), the better the result will be.
You will find that you may have an almost instant understanding of each other with one tailor, while it might be a lost cause with another, no matter how hard you try.
I myself enjoy and prefer the customers who know what they want over those who don't.
With the first I'll have a basis to start from and which then can be developed, this might also include to skip some of the ideas or wishes and replace them with other, ideally more appropriate ones.

That said it does not mean I won't get to that with the latter, it just takes so much more time, plus they are usually much more dependend on other people's opinion (in my case usually that of the wife).

What should be avoided in any case are extremes, like too tight and too loose.
To me this is independent of the style of cut!

Once you've figured out the right "tightness", you can start dressing.

[alden]

There are 3 basic versions of "fit", tight, regular and loose, each one with variations and all seen and felt differently by the wearer, so "the one and only fit" does not exist.

The only fit a client of bespoke, MTM or RTW should be concerned with is a "good fit." The style of the coat can be many things (close to the body, neutral or draped), but "good" fit suffices and this only because "perfect" fit does not exist and even if it did, is irrelevant to the embodiment of style.

Ideally it would give a clean picture, both in front and back.

Ideally according to whom? I, for one, would not want a "clean picture." Are you launching more thunderbolts from your own imagined style heaven?

I have to agree with the rest of what you say, however, I ask you once again to open your mind to the diversity of style.

M Alden

[storeynicholas]

Perfect fit, along with a perfect anything in this world, is ever elusive!
NJS

[doccol91]

To be fair, some of it has to do with body shape. Take a look at Astaire and the Duke, they are much thinner than the average man of their age is today--when men are either highly muscled or fairly beefy. It leads to a whole different silhouette.

[storeynicholas]

To be fair, some of it has to do with body shape. Take a look at Astaire and the Duke, they are much thinner than the average man of their age is today--when men are either highly muscled or fairly beefy. It leads to a whole different silhouette.

Slightly off-topic - but moderns tend to view the michelin-man type of musculature as admirable. In fact, owing to fatty deposits and steroid-induced water retention, the beefcakes of the modern age are often not as strong in proportion with their total weight as super-fit Fred Astaire or even the exercise-mad Duke.
NJS

[couch]

Slightly off-topic - but moderns tend to view the michelin-man type of musculature as admirable. In fact, owing to fatty deposits and steroid-induced water retention, the beefcakes of the modern age are often not as strong in proportion with their total weight as super-fit Fred Astaire or even the exercise-mad Duke.
NJS

Or, for instance, the young Misha, who could do this:



There is no more demanding physical regimen than that of a professional dancer, and you are quite right to cite Astaire as one of the century's greatest athletes (all the more reason to admire the grace with which he carried it).

[storeynicholas]

Couch - exactly - I am as skinny as a rake (no pun intended for readers in another thread - and misunderstood word too, come to that - see Hogarth!) but I certainly would not wish to carry around unnecessary, surplus weight in either fat or muscle. I was an unhealthy 13.5 stones (admittedly., mainly fat) on arrival in Brasil three years ago and now I am down to around 12 stones which, for my (medium) height is (apparently) 'recommended' by various advisers. Speaking just for myself, I could never tolerate 'tight' clothes, for the discomfort alone; as for the rest, I know what I like for my own comfort, convenience and sense of well-being and that's my test! I know one thing for certain: once I had to wear a poorly made bespoke suit for a week as my other clothes were not readily available but when I got them, I immediately changed into my then favourite suit and felt as though I were not wearing anything at all. Yes, that's my best test - for me.
NJS

[Jordan Marc]

Perfect fit, along with a perfect anything in this world, is ever elusive!
NJS

Quite true, Nicholas, but occasionally we experience a fleeting glimpse of someone or something so close to perfection that it takes one's breath away and is never forgotten. Perhaps it is a beautiful woman blessed with a talent uniquely her own, or the light captured in a painting by Vermeer, or the exquisite
shape and color and scent of a bold red rose or a delicate variegated orchid in bloom, or even a great musical composition from the 18th or 19th Century played by the Vienna Philharmonic in the Musikverein in Austria.

It isn't the fit of your clothes that matters most; it's how receptive you are to those unexpected encounters that happen when you least expect it!

JMB

[storeynicholas]

You make the point better than I! The lovely face lost in a crowd; the dying bloom; the fleeting scent: they are perfect because we never get too close and so see them entirely, let alone get to live with them. We have to live in our clothes!
NJS

[Costi]

The discussion reminded me of a sentence from this thread: http://www.thelondonlounge.net/forum/vi ... ion#p40134 : "now and then negligently letting some cacophony appear so as to escape a vice of too great cleanliness" (Emanuele Tesauro writing about making music, 1654).
Being unnatural, perfection is not a virtue, but a vice. The strive for perfection, then, is not fervour for an ideal, but a mania. Perfection and beauty have little in common.
Have you noticed how kitsch tends towards "perfection", in its sense for order, coordination, alignments, distinct contours, "perfect" colours (in that they are not nuanced)? Curious to see what "perfect elegance" might look like? Check it out here, you won't be disappointed (check the other epitomes, too, they are literally unbelievable ): http://www.madonnainn.com/rooms/201.php#

[storeynicholas]

Costi - I think that the word is 'sickly'. That designer should get on board with some multi-national team of hotel designers - the kind engaged to make you feel as though you're in Disneyland; dizzy, under the affluence of incohol, anywhere from Colombo to Cadiz.

Beauty is evanescent. It has to be as "time stoops to no man's lure":

.."beauty vanishes, beauty passes,
However rare, rare it be."

Even if it is never perfect, beauty can certainly be rare.

This realization makes the passing appreciation of its short existence all the more acute and plangent and in proportion with the degree of beauty perceived and the speed of its passing. I believe that we do, though, sometimes, adjust our memories to produce perfection: "les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus." But if we do this too much we end up living in gusts of unbearable nostalgia.
NJS

[schneidergott]

Ideally according to whom? I, for one, would not want a "clean picture."

My clean is just around the blades, the waist and the hips, the neck and a little bit around the sleeves, but it does not exclude additional width in the front and rear armscye.
Maybe I have chosen the wrong translation for the German word "sauber", which could also be translated with: proper, accurate and a few others.
I don't mind the drape style at all, I just don't like a certain way of cutting it, which in my view looks messy and is often not flattering at all.
I know there is a way to get a "clean" (proper) drape like that of Voxsartoria's coats or of your coats made by the same tailor or your Sicilian tailors.
I am aware that it depends on the wearer's physiques (and preferences, of course) how tight or drapy a garment can become or not.
I am also aware that the "perfect fit" per se does not exist *, but one should at least try, rather than calling it "art" and deliver a mediocre garment regarding fit and balance.
* The perfect fit is very subjective when it comes to the feel of a garment (person A might claim a coat is comfortable, while person B might call the same garment not comfortable), but very objective when it comes to the visual appearance of it (balance is the most important matter here rather than width or styling elements).

[doccol91]

[quote]Slightly off-topic - but moderns tend to view the michelin-man type of musculature as admirable. In fact, owing to fatty deposits and steroid-induced water retention, the beefcakes of the modern age are often not as strong in proportion with their total weight as super-fit Fred Astaire or even the exercise-mad Duke.
NJSstoreynicholas

NJS--my point exactly. These guys had a different build as such the tightness we are seeing in their clothes is due to the natural proportions their tailor was able to make throughout their jackets. It was easy to cinch the waist a bit, because the clothes were draping over an elongated form with strong shoulders, leaner chests and small midsections. Today, you tend to find men, who even when in shape, tend to be much bigger throughout. Baryshnikov, swimmers, Bjorn Borg, etc are the exception not the rule.

[Costi]

If tailoring were judged by the same canons as a Swiss cuckoo clock, the German "sauber" method would win any precision contest, but not necessarily the heart and admiration of many a dresser.
Sauber can mean neat, tidy and orderly - better used to describe a chemist's shop than a suit. As a pharmacy is sterile, so can be a garment that says everything about its maker's technical skill and nothing about the wearer's taste: the image lands flatly on the retina and the brain fails to register any emotion beyond propriety and accuracy. Even if the wearer has any amount of style to express, the carrier fails to pass the message across, because it is so round and perfect that style slips by it the way thin air flows around the fuselage of a stealth jet plane, with nothing to catch on to.

[S. Gillette]

Costi, aren't you overinterpreting or misunderstanding a bit the original point made by Schneidergott?
I think he didnt mean that a good jacket fit is determined by looking lifeless. I think we can all agree on the fact that we want clothes which are made expertly. What SG was trying to say is, that most tailors will find a "sauber" (meaning not only tidy, neat, clean and orderly but also proper, adequate, restrained) fit to be superior to what many would call "sloppy". Of course, a neatly fitted jacket can still look vivid and fluent. Nobody was talking about sterile clothing.

My tailor (much like SG) also is of the opinion that a good fit is impossible without a certain degree of "sauberer Zuschnitt und Ausführung" (proper cut/fit), perhaps because he is Austrian and thus most likely influenced by the same school of thought. But, would you, Costi, describe my jackets as lifeless, stiff and sterile?