By Ryan
Burwinkel
All
pictures and text by Ryan Burwinkel.
As you may
remember, I
posed a question a few weeks back, and I’m… well,
not exactly happy to report back with an answer.
I’m also
not exactly unhappy, to be fair. The results, in my opinion, are
pretty middling. The fabric is really nice looking, and they got all
the customized detailing right (were it up to me, I’d have chosen a
different felt under the collar -they went with brown- but that’s
really a trivial matter in the grand scheme of things) The fit is
where the problems are, really. And fit is king.
Have a
look for yourself:
(Suit by
Inodchino
- gray alternate, shirt by Joseph
A. Bank, tie by Charles
Tyrwhitt, shoes by Rockport)
Facing
front, coat and vest on
Facing
back, coat and vest on:
Facing
sideways, coat & vest on:
Front,
vest on, coat off
Sideways,
vest on, coat off
Back, vest
on, coat off
Front,
vest & coat off – here, I transitioned to the Indochino shirt
for some of the pictures
(Shirt by
Indochino,
tie by The
Knottery, cufflinks by The
Greatest Land on God’s Green Earth)
Back, vest
& coat off
And, for
those who are curious, the shirt cuffs, with the suit coat on:
A few
things stick out, besides the hundred pounds I could really do
without.
- I have chicken legs (only exaggerated by my tendency to lock my knees) and sloping shoulders, which this suit isn’t addressing properly.
- I’m not sure if the shoulders are just suffering from Indochino’s minimal shoulder padding, or if the shoulders are too wide, or both. I suspect the last of the three, but I’m still inclined to ask them to bring in the shoulders, just to see if that helps.
- The length of the coat is too short, and I’d extend it by about an inch if I could.
- I’d also bring the sleeves down a bit more, as a little too much cuff is showing for my comfort (especially when paired with the Indochino shirt, which is really much too long in the sleeves, and much too short in the tails.) Their width, on the other hand, seems just fine.
- While we’re on the shirt, I feel like the collar might actually be a bit too big. I’m inclined to have it brought in an extra half-inch.
- The lapels aren’t as skinny looking on me as I feared, but I’d still prefer them a bit wider if I had the choice. The button stance, while a tad high, isn’t actually as high as I had feared, either.
- The vest is a tad too short, due, I suspect, to its measurements modeling after the jacket.
- There’s also a bit of an issue with the arm holes of the vest – they don’t lay right, and excess fabric end up pooling underneath my arms when I have them down, and blousing out when I have them raised.
- The pants are too snug in the waist, hips, and thighs- especially when I sit down.
- The rise of the pants is much too low. The front isn’t actually all that bad. The back, on the other hand, is simply unworkable. As much as I was worried about having visible plumbers crack during the fitting, the final product has me much, much more worried about visible wedgies. I think this is where some of the stylistic choices that Indochino makes in their patterns really comes into play – this base size 16 is too high of a drop, and the rise on the pants is too low. I wonder if they can’t swap these out for the suit pants from another suit size (say, a 17 or 18?) like you would with separates?
- There’s some sort of issue with the cloth pinching between my thighs. I’m not sure if this is a product of the cloth not fitting, my having a less than ideal stance, or both. Again, I’m leaning towards the third of those options.
- I think the break looks just fine, and the opening of the pant legs looks ok. Over all, I do worry that the slimness of the pant opening only exaggerates the different widths of my thighs and calves.
So, on the
whole, I’m not horribly surprised by my results – it seems my
skepticism was more or less well founded. That being said, I do
understand that this is the first draft of what should hopefully be a
masterful final product. To that end, most of the suit issues seem
like they should be fixable, with the possible exception of the
shoulders being brought in or padding added (I can’t imagine any
circumstance under which they’ll add padding). The pants are what
are truly problematic. If they can’t be altered significantly, I’m
probably going to have to throw in the towel. I suspect I’ll have
to go in for a remake, since I want the coat and sleeves lengthened,
and the pants more than likely redone entirely.
Well,
those are my thoughts. I’m very curious as to everyone else’s.
What do you think (besides obviously agreeing that I need to make
friends with my local gym) ?
