Show us your suits

[havershaw]

Here's my double-breasted 3-piece pinstripe suit with the almost 22"-cuffs. I sort of took these photos in hurry, on my way out the door to an xmas party. Yes, I know I'm showing cuff on one arm and not on another. One of my arms is longer than the other and I have to consciously rectify the sleeve situation every time I wear a suit. I have most of my suits tailored with this in mind.

detail of pattern:

look at these cuffs!

without jacket:

two-button pants closure:

I hate what things look like with flash. It's only 5.30 here, and for some reason, we must have flash. argh.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

That's a super suit! Thanks for sharing it!

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Havershaw - great suit! You never see anyone wearing brown suits these days. It's a shame. I love the colour brown for suits. Add another to the want list ... sigh

The English demob suit i bought from Senator Jack will appear on this thread tomorrow or Monday. It has some very interesting features, indeed. A real sharp suit.

bk

 

[havershaw]

Thanks!
Actually, I just counted - I have around thirty suits, and over half of them are tan or brown. And those probably get 85% of my daily wear. Brown is sort of my color, I guess you could say - most of my wardrobe is brown or tan. Similarly, I have around the same number of hats, and probably only five of them are anything other than some shade of brown.
I'll try to post some more photos of my suits at some point this month. I haven't posted suit photos in a while, and I have some real beauties.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Thanks!
Actually, I just counted - I have around thirty suits, and over half of them are tan or brown. And those probably get 85% of my daily wear. Brown is sort of my color, I guess you could say - most of my wardrobe is brown or tan. Similarly, I have around the same number of hats, and probably only five of them are anything other than some shade of brown.
I'll try to post some more photos of my suits at some point this month. I haven't posted suit photos in a while, and I have some real beauties.

I look forward to those pics ...

bk

 

[Mr. Rover]

Wow!

Great looking suits, everyone!
Henry, how about a picture of the full suit?

ray

 

[scotrace]

Great pictures Havershaw. You put together a great look! NICE suits - I love the brown.

 

[Mr. Rover]

This wouldn't happen to be a Hart, Schaffner, Marx job, would it?

ray

 

[Wild Root]

That used to be one of my suit coats. It isn't a Hart, Schaffner, Marx job.

It was a custom made coat that's dated 10/31/46.

Matt offered me a trade I couldn't resist.

=WR=

 

[Mr. Rover]

O darn! I have a HsM Jacket that is a dead ringer for it. Even has 2 buttons on the cuff. Say- I've always wondered what was up with that. How come Brooks Bros. and HSM use two button cuffs?

 

[Matt Deckard]

The two button design wasn't strictly a Brooks Brothers trademark as many believe. the style was pretty common. You just don't see it too often in hollywood movies. You do see it pretty often in period photos.

 

[herringbonekid]

Thanks!
Actually, I just counted - I have around thirty suits, and over half of them are tan or brown.

......................................................................................................

thirty suits! that's just not fair. (i have five).
if you have any that you don't wear often and you're thinking "hmm. maybe i should sell this old thing, it never looks right" then don't hesitate to post them in clasifieds or message me. i'm about your size.

 

[Wild Root]

Well, I can't speak for Havershaw but, if you're his size, you should have no problem finding suits on ebay or in vintage shops. Most vintage suits I find are in that size range. It's all about the thrill of the hunt! Got to dig and leave no stone unturned! I'm a 42L and it's nigh imposable to find stuff in my size but, I do some how manage to find it.

It takes years to build a collection! Be patient my friend and you'll find killer suits!

=WR=

PS. I love your avatar! Such a cool deco theater!

 

[herringbonekid]

i've been buying vintage for six years and wear it 24/7 so i have a lot of stuff. if my number of suits sounds low i should put it into perspective..... i'm more of a mis-matched jacket and trouser man. also, i've turned down a fair number of suits because they were double-breasted. still can't feel comfortable in DB, though i think it works on others. and english vintage is drying up. american ebay has been a godsend.

 

[Wild Root]

Ah, there's your problem right there, you're too picky

You wouldn't like Havershaw's suits much, they're all mostly DB's.

=WR=

 

[Marc Chevalier]

O darn! I have a HsM Jacket that is a dead ringer for it. Even has 2 buttons on the cuff. Say- I've always wondered what was up with that. How come Brooks Bros. and HSM use two button cuffs?

Sleeves with two buttons are most commonly found on the jackets of "sack suits." Sack suits are baggy suits with natural (non-padded) shoulders, and flat-front trousers with straight legs (often hemmed short, for some reason). They have been around in one form or other since the 1870s. Originally, sack suits had a 4-button front; around 1920, 3-button fronts became popular. Ivy Leaguers preferred to roll the lapel to the middle button, leaving the top buttonhole unbuttoned and exposed on the label. We usually associate the sack suit with Brooks Brothers; but once upon a time, many makers (among them Chipp, Rogers Peet, and Boshard Daugherty) sold sack suits for generations. Graduates of Ivy League universities often preferred sack suits: writers Edmund Wilson and F. Scott Fitzgerald never stopped wearing them.

Sack suits were attractive to Old Money for their frumpy subtlety. No one ever looked distinguished in a sack suit, but the act of wearing one indicated that the wearer was, in fact, distinguished.

I don't think that Matt Deckard's jacket is from a sack suit. The probable reason for the two buttons on his sleeve? At some point, a tailor removed the bottom two buttons while shortening the sleeves; the tailor never put back those buttons, leaving the top two "orphaned."

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I have around thirty suits.

Exactly how much closet space do you have? And if you're married (or living with someone), where does your partner find space for her own clothes? Thirty suits take up a lot of room!

 

[Marc Chevalier]

i've been buying vintage for six years and wear it 24/7.

For Pete's sake, take it off in the shower!

 

[Salv]

i've been buying vintage for six years and wear it 24/7 so i have a lot of stuff. if my number of suits sounds low i should put it into perspective..... i'm more of a mis-matched jacket and trouser man. also, i've turned down a fair number of suits because they were double-breasted. still can't feel comfortable in DB, though i think it works on others. and english vintage is drying up. american ebay has been a godsend.

That's so true about vintage drying up here. Most vintage shops now sell mainly 60's and 70's stuff, and it's very difficult to find anything older in decent condition. There's a reasonable shop in Reading - 30 miles west of me - that gets a few good shirts in now and again that'll fit me, but I've had no luck with suits, jackets and trousers. They get nice stuff in, but it's always in M or L - us chunkier boys need at least XL these days. I haven't found a good vintage suit for many years, and only have one vintage suit left in my wardrobe - a two-button from the 1950's. When 40's and 50's vintage US clothes first started appearing in bulk over here in the early 1980's you could pick up a mint condition suit for ?Ǭ£20.00, and there was a huge choice as well. There used to be a shop in Covent Garden called Flip that had racks of suits, fleck tweed sport coats and overcoats, trousers, chinos, shirts, knitwear, ties, and it was all so cheap too. Happy days...

The suits were so cheap I could afford to wear them all the time and as a result they wore out quickly and were thrown away (I know, heresy!). Luckily, when the boom ended, I found a shop that sold excellent repro suits at a reasonable price and bought a few from them over the years. After losing track of them when the shop closed a few years ago I found them again on the web earlier this year and had a new 40's S/B made up. I posted some pictures of one of their old suits on the Getting a 40's suit...tailor made thread along with contact details if anyone is interested. I'll try to get some good photos of the new suit to post here over the next few days.

 

[havershaw]

My suits are about half-and-half, in terms of double and single-breasted. I actually sort of like the single-breasted better, but they're much harder to come by.

Marc, I'm married. And yeah, the clothing storage thing is definitely an issue. The 30+ hats I have (all in boxes) and the absurd number of casual vinatge clothing I own don't help, either. I probably have fifteen vintage dress shirts as well. We just bought a rather small 2-bedroom house, built in the 1920s. We're expecting our first son in March, and for the time being, I'm using his closet and I also keep a small armoire in there. My wife keeps all of her clothes in our bedroom closet and a linen closet in the hallway. I also bought an old department store rack, the kind on wheels that folks would probably put returns on, or clothes waiting to be put back out. That has all of my suits on it, and I keep that in the boy's room as well. I suppose when he gets older, he's going to want that rack of suits out of there...and he'll probably want his closet back too!

Hopefully we'll put on an addition in a couple of years, because the odds of me not buying any more vintage clothing in the next several years are pretty low. It's...well, ridiculous.