SUIT ALTERATIONS
When choosing a suit, style is important, comfort is key and fit paramount
If you want to look good in a suit, then it should actually fit you. If this sounds obvious, then why do so many men walk the streets with cuffs too short or too long, collars pulling backwards or jackets that are too tight?
Never, never be surprised if an off-the-peg suit doesn’t fit you like a glove; very few men have the measurements of a male model and
even fewer designers take this into account. But help is just an inside leg measurement away. “When you are buying a suit, it really must fit around the shoulders and chest,” says Henry Buck’s buyer Paolo Michelini.“ All the rest can be altered. Many men have big shoulders but not big tummies, or the other way round.”
The world is divided, says Michelini, into men with square necks and those with more rounded posture – apart from those catwalk Adonises of course. The typical squarenecked bloke is an athletic type. He stands
very straight, whereas tailoring traditionally allows for a little postural slump.
Our straight-necked hero will have the problem of collar pull – where the collar is pulled backward, giving the wearer a look that he is being dragged backwards. “Look at me, I’m short but I have big shoulders and
I’m not really skinny,” Michelini says. “So I have to go up a size and have the jacket adjusted because of my waist and square neck. This is a very common alteration. When you buy a suit, adjustment is really important.”
Adjusting a suit to fit your body is all part of the service at Henry Buck’s, which employs three full-time tailors in its Collins Street store, where alterations are made free of charge, year round, except for sale time, when the tailors cannot keep up with demand.
Alterations can take a week but the tailors can turn around a suit in a day if needs be. “We have a rush at Cup time when people come in at the last minute,” Michelini explains. “And also our interstate customers
like to shop and take their suit with them when they leave.”
The waxes and wanes of male body shape over a lifetime are also tackled by the tailors. If you buy a suit from Henry Buck’s you can take it back and have re-alterations done free of charge. “Usually, young customers get married and put on weight – you know, it’s happiness,” Michelini says, smiling.
“We’ve had older customers whose wives or doctors have told them they must lose weight and so they drop 20kg, and then they’ve got all these beautiful garments they can’t wear. So they bring them to us and if it’s possible we fix them. One of our customers lost 30kg and brought his whole wardrobe in for realteration. So we did it over a month or so. There is usually an allowance in the fabric for customers to lose and put on weight.”
For men who are unusual shapes or just hanker after unusual cuts, bespoke is an option. Henry Buck’s has a veritable library of wonderful cloths, which can be flown in from Europe in a week. There’s also access to a master tailor, who can craft the suit to your body shape or sartorial whim. Preferably by appointment.
