The Vintage Tailoring Thread

[Nick D]

anyone else have any thoughts on the aesthetic appeal of the shirt shoulder ?

Personally I don't care for it on suit. My preference is for a strong shoulder, a structured front, and a defined waist. But I do agree that it would look good on workwear.

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

Personally I don't care for it on suit. My preference is for a strong shoulder, a structured front, and a defined waist. But I do agree that it would look good on workwear.

:arated: This.

But as far as I understand you already got that covered so you need something new before you get bored? In general I also don't like elbow patches or narrow trousers. But they fit to your style and look great on your suits. [huh] Give it a try.

 

[Chasseur]

anyone else have any thoughts on the aesthetic appeal of the shirt shoulder ?

Is this similar to the shoulder that would have been common on those 1910s and 20s suit jackets that have a unpadded natural shoulder?

Would the shoulder on this jacket be one of these?

It is one of those belted action back sportcoats from Crittenden:

 

[herringbonekid]

Is this similar to the shoulder that would have been common on those 1910s and 20s suit jackets that have a unpadded natural shoulder?

that's what i'd like to know too; how common it was in the past.
your jacket looks like it has a shirt shoulder but machine topstitched all around (possibly a flat-felled seam like a shirt) which is the usual shop / workwear jacket way, rather than the hand stitched (just over the top of the shoulder) bespoke way.

 

[herringbonekid]

most vintage trouser pockets are finished on the seam. that is; they follow the straight line of the side seam like this:

some, but far fewer, slant forwards away from the side seam. this pocket actually makes more sense because less strain is put on the top corner when you put your hands in:

suppose you don't like the look of the exposed side seam above ? some trousers have a forward slanting pocket, but the seam follows it; the seam is straight until it hits the bottom of the pocket then it slants forward. this seems to be the least common option. out of all of my vintage suits and odd trousers only 2 pairs are cut like this:

here's a vertical line to show where the straight side seam would have been:

Anderson and Sheppard still do this style of pocket, as they see it as the cleaner finish:

if you check your vintage trousers you'll probably find this type of pocket is the rarest.

 

[Nick D]

Where do double-jetted side pockets fall in this scale? Are they more common on odd trousers?

 

[herringbonekid]

Where do double-jetted side pockets fall in this scale? Are they more common on odd trousers?

most common on German trousers, both suit and odd. i don't think i've ever seen a British example on a suit trouser, only on some jodhpurs / plus fours.

 

[Mario]

Sounds correct. German trousers are the only ones I've seen so far with this kind of pocket. Rudie has them on one of the trousers he commissioned.

BTW: Some time ago I've found a nice tutorial on jetted pockets over at Ask Andy:

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/...8-How-to-make-Jetted-pockets-By-Darren-Beaman

 

[herringbonekid]

BTW: Some time ago I've found a nice tutorial on jetted pockets over at Ask Andy:

see... dead easy !

 

[Nick D]

It looks like on the photo I posted from Magnoli the long seams aren't pressed open to give a smoother finish. The tutorial you posted shows them being pressed open, which gives the flat transition into the jet.

 

[herringbonekid]

here's a German one. topstitched 2-3mm back from the edge for extra strength :

 

[Qirrel]

Not too long ago I bought a suit which had no trousers. Since it is from the 1960s, I probably wouldn't have got a whole lot for it if I sold it on ebay, so I decided instead to rip it up and recut it to fit me. This is what the jacket looked like when I bought it:

Peeling away the lining, the canvas is revealed. Top left is the collar, top right is the lapel, bottom right is the horsehair chest piece, bottom left is some kind of reinforcement linen canvas for the shoulder:

Close up of the collar completely removed. The fall has been padded, but the stand is neither padded nor stiffened with a machine stitch:

The shoulder pad from hell:

For a Norwegian jacket from the mid 60s, the inner construction is very un-german and old fashioned. It looks much more like the typical canvas construction of British jackets from the 1930s and earlier. The numerous cuts in the canvas, especially in the armscye (they can not be seen in the picture below as they are hidden by the horsehair canvas) tell me that this is a crooked cut, a method which was labeled obsolete by German tailoring journals as early as the late 20s. It could still be found in British cutting books of the 1950s.
The main body canvas is composed of wool and hair. On a British jacket I would expect to see body canvas more like that which is used as a reinforcement in the shoulder of this coat. Otherwise the construction is almost exactly like that described in a 1930s British tailoring book, one of the exceptions being that the haircloth is not covered with domette or linen, nor are the edges covered with tape to prevent the hair from "migrating". (Which is a bad thing. It is not obvious in the picture, but stiff strands of hair have begun working their way into the armscye and through the lapel break line.) The jacket is also cut without a sidebody. The sidebody was a universal feature of the big German systems from the 1950s and 1960s.

 

[Qirrel]

Here we are at the actual re-cutting stage: I baste shut the pockets and then steamed the hell out of all the pieces to remove any ironwork or shaping still left in them.

Then I recut and marked all the pieces, and started making a new canvas for the fronts. I could have left the fronts alone (i.e. not remove the facing, all the padding stitches etc.), but it would have made it more difficult to get a good fit in the shoulder area.

 

[herringbonekid]

... tell me that this is a crooked cut, a method which was labeled obsolete by German tailoring journals as early as the late 20s. It could still be found in British cutting books of the 1950s.

Q, i hope you can explain 'crooked' cut to me. i've read a couple of definitions online; one i understood, the other i didn't and they were mutually contradictory.

 

[Nick D]

That shoulder pad looks like a brick. What are you going to replace that with? It looks like the rebuild is going well.

 

[Qirrel]

You might have read Mahon's explanation of the crooked/straight jacket. It is, at best, misleading. There are some good explanations here: (although a bit heavy)
http://thelondonlounge.net/gl/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=272&start=30 Read the post by schneidergott and sator
http://www.cutterandtailor.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1403

The crooked and straight neckpoints are easier to understand if you define a position of the neckpoint which is "neutral", that is to say, a neckpoint which does not require that you do lots of ironwork or darting to get a fitting garment. This is usually defined by the distance from a line perpendicular to the chest line, drawn through the neckpoint to another line perpendicular to the chest line, drawn through the point which marks the front of the armscye. This is usually 1/10 of the chest measure for the proportional figure.

On the following illustration, the neckpoint marked by the black lines is in the neutral position. The method of crookening or straightening is shown:

The simple summary of the major effect of crookening and straightening is this (Provided you do not do any ironwork or darting to fix it): If you make a coat with a straight neckpoint, the effect when finished will be that excess material is forced to the region in front of the armscye. If you make a coat with a crooked neckpoint, the effect when finished will be that excess material is forced to the front (making the front balance too long), so that the coat sweeps away when unbuttoned, and has a bulge somewhere on the lapel break line and stands away from the neck when buttoned. To fully understand why, read the link above to the cutter and tailor ("Poole on the neckpoint"). Basically, the neckpoint only has one location in which it can be, therefore it will force itself into that position from the crooked or straight position, thereby creating a problem (or allowing for some ironwork).

Now, the reason I know that the jacket above was cut crooked, is that the armhole becomes smaller when the neckpoint is crookened, as illustrated here by the shaded area:

This is why you need to stretch the armscye, like in the illustration below. The armhole is now large enough, and in the process you have got a much more shapely jacket than a straight one. In addition to this, you will need to do something about the fullness at the fronts, which is usually fixed by either shrinking (as below) or taking out a lapel dart. The most common method to shrink this part is to hold the tape which goes along the lapel break line very tightly, and then smoothing everything out with the iron. This also helps create a nice rolling shape to the chest.

In my jacket, three significant wedges were opened in the canvas at the armscye (cuts are necessary since the canvas can not be stretched well here), like in the illustration below. It is a telltale sign of a crooked cut.

 

[Qirrel]

That shoulder pad looks like a brick. What are you going to replace that with? It looks like the rebuild is going well.

I plan to remove most of the wadding from the shoulder pads and reuse them.

 

[Gin&Tonics]

this is spalla camicia with a bit of wadding. you can clearly see the 'edge' formed along the arm hole where the seam allowance has been pressed underneath, away from the sleeve:

remove that wadding and it would look more like this, which is pretty extreme 'waterfall' effect:

i quite like this one as it looks a bit more workwear-ish. i could imagine doing something like this in cotton:

these could be vintage spallas:

anyone else have any thoughts on the aesthetic appeal of the shirt shoulder ?

I don't know anything about tailoring, but I know what I like, and I sure DON'T like the shirt shoulder on a suit or jacket, regardless of its pedigree. It looks too sloppy and messy to me. I also hate that stitching edge detail shown on the lapel in the second to last photo. It's rather popular with modern suits currently; I think it makes it look like the tailor wasn't finished with your jacket!.

Just my opinions. YMMV.

 

[herringbonekid]

Q, thanks for the explanation. it seems that crooked cut is for a prominent chest / erect figure and straight is for a flat chest / stooped figure. if that's the case then why would the method have been branded 'obsolete'. i would have thought that as long as people have variations in posture, both straight and crooked jackets would continue to be cut ?

 

[herringbonekid]

also, where the excess material ends up seems logically the opposite of what it should be (to me). here the crooked shoulder is tilted back giving about an inch more fabric around the front armscye:

... surely that would ripple around the scye, a bit like the 'drape' effect ?


conversely, the straight shoulder has less material around the 'normal' armscye as everything is tilted foreward:

... so why would excess go to the armscye ?

see, this is why i'm not a tailor, just a maker.