Tailoring your Suit Jacket: The Ultimate Guide (2024)

Jackets to men are something much more than just pieces of cloth. They’re the aura of sophistication and nobleness that men have aspired for since centuries. For jackets to serve their purpose, they must fit perfectly without suffocating the owner. For ready-made suit jackets, as well as ones that you had tailored to fit your size and specification perfectly years ago, there are a couple of alterations that you can go for to get the dapper game on again. Today, we will reveal all the possible alterations, from easy fixes to the most challenging ones, and how they would affect your jacket, pretty much like we did in our previous post about tailoring your pants.With Christmas just around the corner already, this is the best time to start thinking of cost-effective ways to alter your old suit jacket and look sharp throughout the holidays!

Easy Alterations

There are a series of easy alterations that you could go for. These require minimum effort from the tailor, but the results are very pleasing.

Collar:

Simply put, you can have the jacket’s collar raised or lowered depending on how you want it to be visible. If you’ve gained height and/or have broadened your shoulders, chances are you’d need your collar adjusted. The equation to this alteration is simple. If the shirt collar is too visible, have the collar raised; if it’s not visible; have the collar lowered.

Seams:

Usually, the seams are responsible for defining the façade of your jacket. If you fix the seams well, you’ will win half the battle. If you’ve gained or lost weight, you’d certainly need the seams to be adjusted, so that they’re aligned perfectly with your body. When it comes to side seams, you must make sure they’re lined perfectly with the sides of your body. This could mean either bringing them in or taking them out. On the other hand, the center seam must be adjusted in a similar manner to synchronize with the side seams.

Buttons:

Probably the easiest of alternations, repositioning buttons usually does the trick. If you want your jacket to adjust to your waist, simply bring the buttons in or move them out. This allows your jacket to wrap perfectly around you, without costing you much.

Sleeve Length:

Another easy task for a tailor that does not require much expertise. Based on your arm’s length, your tailor can adjust the sleeve length, so some cuff is visible. Most ready-made suit jackets come with a longer sleeve so they can accommodate the gents with longer arms. Chances are that they also have extra fabric built into the hem of the sleeve, which makes lengthening the sleeves easy. The problem is when the jacket has functional buttons (aka surgeon’s cuffs) that allow the sleeves of the jacket to roll up. In this case, adjusting the sleeves is a much more difficult task.

Vents:

There isn’t much that you could do with the vents. You could have them closed if you’re looking for a change in style, or have their length altered if you want the suit to adjust with your waist or hip. Now, if you want to create vents to an Italian-style jacket (with no vents), it’s best to buy a new one because there will be no extra material for the tailor to work with so they can give you what you want. Plus, the result will not flatter your rear end.

Medium Alterations

Sleeve from shoulder:

There are a couple of things you could get done with the sleeves from the shoulders. First up, you can alter their length by adding or subtracting buttons from the cuff. This does require a bit of craftsmanship since you would want to retain the “fitting” feeling of the jacket.

If you’re shortening the sleeve, bringing the cuff in and losing a couple of buttons is probably the best way to go around it. However, you could also get the buttons moved higher up. In case this isn’t possible, or if the alteration would make the jacket look bad, having the sleeve shortened from the shoulder is the next best thing. This is a tougher task since it requires a lot of unstitching and re-stitching.

When it comes to increasing the length of a sleeve, your tailor would have to look under the cuff to see if there’s added cloth that could be opened up. Once that happens, they can easily have the cuff buttons repositioned to suit the extension. If there isn’t extension room under the cuff, the tailor will look at the shoulder to see if there’s extra cloth there.

Pad Shoulders:

You would often notice jackets having misaligned shoulders. This is very common since it gets tough to put an equal amount of padding on both sides and then align them perfectly together. The quickest fix to this would be to increase the amount of padding on the side that is lower. Your tailor must put your shoulder length into perspective before attempting this alteration, though, because you wouldn’t want your shoulders to look massive.

Chest Alignment:

This alteration has to be put into place if you’ve altered the side and center seams, but the jacket isn’t fitting well. To align the entire look with the altered seams, chest alteration is the key. This requires a decent amount of unstitching to get the front look on point and, of course, some level of expertise to get it right.

Tough Alterations

Shoulder point reduction:

This mainly refers to the extension of the shoulders from your collar. For ready-made jackets that don’t sit well, this alteration would be necessary, but it has to be kept in mind that this often doesn’t end well. You need an experienced tailor that has done lots of this type of jacket alterations; otherwise, this could be a disaster. Just consider that the padding of the shoulder will need to be opened, and cloth brought inwards or outwards, and then the padding must be put back into place. Clearly, the is a huge amount of work and level of craftsmanship required.

Sleeve rotation:

Having the sleeves rotated is a necessary alteration if you have had the seams and chest adjusted. This is because the entire alignment of the jacket has shifted and leaving the sleeves as is will make them look out of place. To deal with this, you must have the sleeves taken off entirely, rotated, and then put back into place.

Lapel alteration:

Lapel alteration doesn’t affect the fitting of your jacket; it is just to have the style changed. For your old jackets with big lapels that don’t blend well with today’s fashion, you can have their size adjusted. Lapel alteration can also help you change the style altogether.

Pocket removal:

Getting pockets added or removed is an extremely tough procedure and doesn’t really add a lot of value to your jacket. It is possible, but wouldn’t be worth the danger that you put your jacket into unless you have trusted hands to work miracles on it.

Length shortening:

If you’re getting a ready-made jacket that is too long and doesn’t look good on you, you can get it shortened. Even though the procedure is fairly simple, it requires extensive craftsmanship to shorten perfectly from all sides. Beware, though, because if you’re shortening the length too much, you pose major threats to the pockets and vent, because they will start looking add. This means that your tailor will have to adjust them as well.

Have you ever had your suit jacket tailored? What did you alter? How did it go? Do share in the comments below!