05 Feb
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Single Breasted vs Double Breasted Tuxedos

Written by Marco Raynault

This week at SuitUpp, we’ve written about the Fabrics used in Tuxedos, and Tuxedo Maintenance Tips. We’ll wrap the week up by talking about single and double breasted tuxedos.

single-breasted-tuxedo

Single Breasted Tuxedo

A single breasted tuxedo (as shown above), just like a suit, will have the suit buttoned-up right in the front. This type of tuxedo is usually worn unbuttoned (which means that it will look less bulky – good for men with a larger frame). If you are going to wear your tuxedo unbuttoned, you should try to wear a vest underneath. The nice thing about the single breasted tuxedo is that it can also be worn buttoned up (depending on your own taste).

double-breasted-tuxedo

Double Breasted Tuxedo

A double breasted tuxedo will have a flap come over so that it is buttoned on the right side ( remember the picture’s left is your right – you probably knew this, but just in case).

This type of tux will make you look like you have a bigger frame and so it is a great choice for men with smaller frames. If you are wearing a double breasted tux, make sure to button up (this is mandatory).

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03 Feb
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Fabrics Used in Tuxedos

Written by Marco Raynault

Tuxedos are the theme here are SuitUpp this week, and so in this blog post, we’ll talk about the different types of fabrics used in tuxedos.

tuxedo

Polyester / Polywool Blend
Polyester tuxes are really the lowest in cost. This factor is important for individuals that will be wearing their tuxedos more often. For example, if you are a musician in an orchestra, this is important to you. This type of fabric will also last longer but is not the smoothest.

100% Worsted / Burlington Wool
When you go to rent a tuxedo, this is the type of fabric that you’ll see most often. The fabric is still affordable but is more soft than polyester. Typically, 60 threads per inch is what you would expect.

Super 80, Super 100 and super 120
As with suits, wool based is the most extravagant and nicest type there is (this basically means that you will have to spend more $). Just as with suits, super 80 means 80 threads per square inch, 100 and 120 are 100 threads per square inch and 120 threads per square inch respectively. The higher the thread count, the softer the suit will be (and typically more expensive).

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01 Feb
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Tuxedo Maintenance Tips

Written by Marco Raynault

We’ve written previously about maintaining your suit and before we start writing about tuxedos, we strongly recommend you read our blog post here: How to Take Care of Your Suit so it Lasts.

Calvin-Klein-Tuxedo-Crystal-07500_md

Since an occasion to wear a tuxedo doesn’t come up as often as an occasion to wear a suit, the tuxedo does spend quite a bit of time in storage. For this reason, it is important that you know how to store it properly.

1) Try to dry-clean your tuxedo before hanging it in storage. This is assuming that you are not going to wear it again next week. In other words, if its going to be stored for a while, then it should be dry-cleaned before it gets hanged.

2) When you are hanging your tuxedo, make sure that there is nothing in the pockets and nothing that would cause the cloth to get deformed in shape.

3) Hang your tuxedo in a dry location (i.e. avoid moisture).

4) Use an airtight suit bag for the storage and make sure to drop in some moth protection in order to be extra safe. For more info on this, make sure to read our article about preventing moth holes in your clothing.

5) Unbutton the tuxedo before hanging it so that it will fall back into its original tailored form.

6) When hanging it, make sure that it is not squished in your closet.

7) Use a nice and thick hanger without pointy edges so it doesn’t damage the tux.

As for other maintenance tips, if you do stain your tuxedo, try using a moist cloth (cold water) and try to spot clean gently. This is of course a temporary measure so you don’t have to run out of the event to the dry cleaners. Tuxedos are a valuable asset so if you do stain yours, do visit the dry cleaners as soon as you can.

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29 Jan
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Sports Jacket vs Blazer – What is the difference?

Written by Marco Raynault

Sports jackets and blazers are similar in that both usually don’t come with a pair of matching pants, but there are a few differences between them that do make them distinct. For one thing, a sports jacket is usually patterned while the blazer is usually solid in color.

Some of you may have heard of the “odd jacket”. The modern day blazer derives from this fabulous article of clothing. The name comes from the fact that this jacket lacks a pair of matching pants. Typically, this type of jacket will have an offbeat fabric or offbeat pattern such as pleats – Seersucker is a common fabric type that you will see with this type of jacket (see our blog post about Seersucker Fabric and our post on Seersucker Jackets). Take for example the following jacket:

Seersucker Sport Coat

The sports jacket in itself was invented as a means of wearing something more relaxed at the gentlemen’s club or at a tennis match. Sports jackets are said to have patterns in order to distinguish them from the traditional suit jacket. Typical patterns include Shetland stripes (Ivy League style) and madras plaids (country club style).

The word blazer partially came from the notion of being blazed with more color – you’ve probably noticed that blazers can come in all colors. A more traditional blazer is the nautical blazer that is typically navy blue with brass buttons:

The blazer can be dressed up with flannel pants and can be dressed down with jeans. Double breasted blazers are typically worn by older generations and the single breasted blazer is favored by the younger generation.

As a final note, if you’re going to a formal dinner, skip the blazer and sports coat and stick to the suit :)

Filed under: Blazers and Sports Jackets

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27 Jan
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Replacing Your Black Suit Pants with Other Pants

Written by Marco Raynault

Hugo-Boss-Black-Label-Scorsese-42

We recently received a question about matching your pinstripe jacket with pants that did not originally come with the jacket in last week’s blog series. Now you may think, that because your suit black suit jacket doesn’t have pinstripes, finding a matching pair of pants should be trivial. Believe it or not, as simple as it may seem, it is not that easy to match your black suit jacket with black pants that did not originally come with your jacket.  The reason for this is that black comes in so many different shades. Most of these hues are not visible to the untrained eye unless there is sufficient light. In other words, if you are heading to a night event, you may be in luck. If you are going to wear this outfit to work during the day where natural sunlight is present, then you may have a problem on your hands – don’t worry though, we’re here to give you some advice :)

First and foremost, remember that your tailor, in some cases, can do wonders. Before throwing those pants out and looking for a replacement, pay a visit to your local tailor to see what can be done for you. If you are looking for a tailor in your neighborhood that we recommend, give us a shout and we may be able to help recommend one. If you misplaced your pants and cannot find them, you may also want to try wearing a different color all together. Depending on the shade of black your jacket is, you may want to try charcoal/grey pants. If this doesn’t work for you, for whatever reason, and you still end up shopping for a new pair of pants in the black, make sure to take your jacket with you and ask the salesperson to help you find a few matches. Then, if you’re feeling gutsy, stop a few ladies and ask them if you’ve found a match – it should be fun and, well, women have a good eye for catching these things.

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25 Jan
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Steaming Your Suit vs Dry Cleaning it

Written by Marco Raynault

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How often should you steam your suit and how often should you dry clean it? Before answering this question, we should point out that there are a number of things that you should do to take care of your suit even before the dry cleaning and steaming part.

1) Keep the dust and particles off. Brush your suit as often as you can in order to keep particles that don’t belong off of your precious clothing.

2) Hang your suit and pants as soon as your done wearing them. Leave these items enough room in your closet so they aren’t squished. If you really care about your pants (we recommend this), you shouldn’t fold it over a hanger but rather hang it upside down from the cuffs with soft clamps.

3) Don’t forget the moth balls somewhere in a box in your closet.

4) If you’re storing your suit for a long time, make sure to store it within a garment bag.

Believe it or not, you should really only dry clean your suit at the dry cleaners once a year. No matter how great your dry cleaner may be, frequent dry cleaning will cause damage to your suit. If there is a stain on your suit, try spot cleaning it with cold water. If this doesn’t work, take it to the dry cleaner for spot cleaning. As for the steamer, invest in a good one so you can use it all the time without worry. Try steaming your suit and letting it hang dry before you wear it.

You already know this, but NEVER iron your suit. BAD idea. avoid it :)

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15 Jan
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How to Match the odd Pinstripe Jacket with Pants? Should the Pants Have Stripes?

Written by Marco Raynault

Recently, one of our readers asked the following: “Ok, so if I already have a nice, pin stripe jacket and want to match pin stripe slacks with it, do the stripes need to be both the same width and the same width apart?”

This is a great question, and before we answer it, we’ll refer you to our post on How to Match a Pinstriped Jacket with Other Pinstriped Clothing.

Take a look at the following perfectly matched 3 piece pinstriped suit from Sean John:

Sean-Jean-Brown-Pin-Stripe-3-Piece-Suit-158

As you can see, the pinstripes on this suit are perfectly matched since the 3 pieces come together with the purchase of this suit. It would be very difficult to try and match the pinstripes of your jacket as well as done in the suit above by finding another pair of pants. We highly discourage doing this since the combination would look more than mismatched and even disheveled. Instead, what we do recommend is that you find solid colored pants or even jeans (if the occasion is not formal). This will ensure that it doesn’t look like you did a poor job at the match and the combination would still look ok (this works best if you have a pinstriped blazer). If you had to wear pinstriped pants, we would recommend wearing faint pinstripes.

The picture shown above would still be somewhat difficult to match. If the pinstripes on your jacket weren’t as visible, the job would be easier. Take fore example the following Pinstripe Horst Dusseldorf suit:

horst-pinstripe-suit

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14 Jan
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What Color Pants Should I Wear with Light Brown Shoes?

Written by Marco Raynault

If you are going to buy only one pair of brown shoes, then it should probably be a pair of dark brown shoes. Why you ask? Well, in an ideal world, everyone would have both light and dark brown shoes, but in reality, most men have one pair of brown shoes and if you were to own one pair, dark brown would be the best since it will match almost any pair of pants :) Now, lets switch the view for a second and pretend that you are a SuitUpp model – i.e. you have access to a wide variety of shoe colors for a photoshoot and you happen to choose light brown shoes… what kind of pants would go best?

The lighter the shoe color, the lighter you pant color should be. Take for example, the model who is wearing this Ralph Lauren Brown Sharkskin Suit:

ralph_lauren_sharkskin_brown

As you can see, he has light brown shoes that go with his sharkskin brown pants. If you were to wear light-brown or off-white pants, then light brown pants would go very well. The same concept applies to jeans as well. If you are wearing darker color jeans, go with dark brown shoes. If you’re wearing light colored jeans, then go with light brown shoes. While doing this, don’t forget the golden rule with shoes… your belt has to match :)

So to conclude:

1) If you’re going to buy only one pair of brown shoes, go with dark brown (matches more pant colors)

2) Lighter colored pants go with lighter colored shoes

3) Your belt must match your shoes

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12 Jan
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Should I Wear a Vest with Lapels if my Jacket already has Lapels?

Written by Marco Raynault

A 3 piece suit is a beautiful phenomenon but you can definitely wear your suit vest without the jacket. The question, though, is that if you do, should your vest have lapels?

Take a look at the following vest: Sean John Pinstriped Vest:

Sean-Jean-Brown-Pin-Stripe-3-Piece-Suit-149

This vest doesn’t have lapels but the following vest does:

vest-with lapels

The truth of the matter is that if your jacket has lapels, your vest doesn’t need to. If you are wearing the vest as a standalone, it could have lapels and it could also not – does not make too much of a difference. The lapels add a layer of formality and ornament to your attire. We do feel, though that wearing lapels with your vest, when you are also wearing your suit jacket, has the potential of looking slightly overdone – and it may take some attention away from your killer tie, but we are also not denying the possibility of this being done correctly (the picture above shoes how this is done properly).

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08 Jan
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Can I Wear my Watch on my Right or Left Wrist?

Written by Marco Raynault

movado-series-800-chronograph-wristwatch1

Most people in society (including SuitUpp guys) write with their right hands. In order to keep one’s wrist-watch out of the way, it has become a custom for the watch to be worn on the left wrist. As a result of this norm, you’ll notice that the dial to configure the watch above is also on the right side (making it easy to use with your right hand – only when you wear the watch on your left wrist).

If you’re left handed, then you’ll have a legitimate excuse for wearing the watch on your right wrist – however, it will still look weird. I happen to be left handed myself but still wear my watch on my left hand. When it comes to writing, I simply take off my watch to keep it out of harm’s way. This, of course, isn’t the most ideal solution – but, it works. The good news, though, is that there are some left handed watches out there. Check out the watch below and note how the dial is on the left side (provisioning the wearing of this watch on one’s right wrist):

left-handed-seiko-watch

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