Don’t Make These New Suit Mistakes

If you’re a regular reader of the Ed’s Fine Imports blog, hopefully you’ve picked up a menswear tip or two. But even the most informed men’s clothing fashionistas can make a blunder on occasion. And nowhere is that truer than in the tailored new suit mistakes we see men making all the time.  

3 Mistakes Men Make with New Tailored Suits

The next time you bring home a newly tailored suit, use the following tips to avoid making common mistakes.

1. Remove the Baste Stitches - Back in the day, tailors often fitted you for a suit jacket or blazer on the spot. They used stitched threads to mark where alterations were to be made. Today, you may spot one remaining throwback to that time on your new jacket. If you see a row of obvious, wide stitching running from the suit collar to the top of the sleeve, it should be carefully removed. Known as baste stitching, there’s no real purpose for it any longer.
2. Open the Vents - Tailored jackets sometimes have a number of stitches in place to help keep the jacket's shape as it goes from the sewing machines to the rack. But that doesn’t mean you should be spotted wearing a suit that sports the stitches. Jacket vents, or the openings at the bottom of the back of the jacket, are kept in place with stitches in the shape of an “X”. You should remove these even before you try on the jacket in the store.
   
3. Open Up Your Storage Space - In another effort to help a suit maintain its shape before you take ownership, the waist pockets of men’s suit jackets are often stitched shut. The stitching is invisible to the wearer and observers alike. Many men will leave the stitching in place to avoid the saggy pockets look. But you can free up the storage space that lies in the pockets, and still help the suit stay crisp, by removing the stitching and not putting anything heavy in the pockets.