Maybe we're accustomed to custom-made suits being relatively clean, or maybe the custom-made shops have too high expectations for customers. After customizing shirts, some customers occasionally ask questions like "Why aren't the sleeves of the shirt clean? Why are there so many wrinkles at the collar and underarms?"
How can the tailor explain that both suits and shirts are custom-made clothes, so why can the suits be relatively clean (winkle-less) when worn by consumers, but the shirts cannot?
This needs to be explained from three aspects: clothing materials, structure, craftsmanship, and the matching of the human body.
Material
As for the fabrics of custom-made clothing, the fabrics for suits are not necessarily easier to make flat and fit than those for shirts. One of the important reasons why custom-made suits look flatter than shirts is not only the difference between the fabrics of the two, but also the use of trims.
The human body surface is not flat, but is affected by bones, muscles and fat, forming different ups and downs. There are more than ten kinds of accessories and ingredients for a traditional suit. The fabric of the suit does not shape the objective ups and downs of the human body, but the decent turn after being "corrected" by various trims such as shoulder pads and chest canvas.
Most shirts have only one layer and only a few kinds of auxiliary materials. Unless a more elastic fabric is used, the effect will be improved. The thin plane of the shirt alone cannot guarantee that the shirt fits the turning surface of the human body perfectly. However, if a suit has no lining, no canvas, no shoulder pads, and no sleeve cotton, it is not necessarily smoother than a shirt.
2. Garmet structure
The structures of suits and shirts are also different. The sleeves of a suit are two-piece sleeves, while the sleeves of a shirt are one-piece sleeves. Not only are the two different in the number of pieces, but the elbows of the two-piece sleeves are curved, which is more in line with the natural turning shape of the arm bending forward than one-piece sleeves. The two-piece structure of a suit sleeve naturally has smoother lines than the one-piece structure of a shirt sleeve.
The body of a suit has two front pieces, two side pieces, and two back pieces, while the body of a shirt has only two front pieces and one back piece. From the perspective of the body structure, a suit has one more side piece than a shirt, and the body shape of such a suit is more three-dimensional than a shirt without side pieces, and it fits the three-dimensional shape of the human body better, and the body is easier to fit.
In addition, the collars of most suits are open collars that turn outward, while the collars of most shirts are closed collars that wrap tightly around the neck. Suits with open collars have a dart treatment at the collar opening, which is actually equivalent to pinching a dart at the front collar. Structurally, the suit placket will fit the morphological characteristics of the human chest better than the shirt placket structure.
3. Craftmanship.
Craftsmanship separated from materials and structure is meaningless. To analyze the craftsmanship of suits and shirts, we must start from these two aspects: materials and structure.
Suits generally use chest canvas, shoulder pads, sleeve pads, and welts to create the basic shape to meet the decent turns of the body. Secondly, waist darts, belly darts, collar darts, and back darts are used to create shapes. Finally, high-temperature pulling, pushing, and shaping are used to soften the decent bumps and curves.
Shirts do not have as many trims as suits to support the shape, and the fabric is rarely processed by ironing and shaping techniques such as tucking. Although the back and cuffs are structurally processed, such as waist darts at the back, shoulder darts on both sides of the shoulder, and pleats on the cuffs, to ensure the basic looseness required for activities, the overall craftsmanship is still not as complicated as that of suits.
Generally speaking, shirt materials are thinner and closer to the body, and their structure is closer to a plane, which makes it easier to reveal the contours of the body and makes it harder to create a three-dimensional shape that is close-fitting and flat. Even custom-made shirts do not look as smooth and fitting as suits.
For custom clothing business owners, the most important thing is not only to understand the differences in materials, structures, and craftsmanship between suits and shirts, but more importantly to help consumers understand customization from a relatively objective perspective, and not to let customers have excessively high expectations of customization that go beyond objective standards.
Comments