I may buy a suit soon. Emphasis on may. And I will have to get the pants tailored as most suits with my size chest have a pant that is 4-6" too large.
Please do not say ‘many places will tailor them for free if you buy a suit there’ as I intend to buy my suit(s) the same place I buy tons of stuff, on ebay. Why buy my suit on ebay you ask? Well, why eat hot dogs when you can have steak? The point being if I buy a 50 or 52" chest suit on ebay I need to have the pants tailored to bring the waist down and I don’t know how much that’ll cost.
Our local tailor charged $15 to alter the waist. YMMV, but I am sure they will tell you if you call and ask. I would advise against doing it yourself–see hot dog/steak analogy above.
The kind of tailoring required will be beyond you. You could hem them youself, but unless you’re a better tailor than I imagine, you won’t know how to take the waist off and alter them that way. You’ll need to get them professionally altered.
A lot of dry cleaners still offer alterations and repairs, but for something like you need, you’d have to have the pants marked/pinned. And only people experienced with alterations really know how to mark and pin.
Most alterations places charge a flat rate for simple alterations (5 or 10 bucks for cuffing, 10 bucks for taking in the waist, etc.) But if you really need the pants heavily altered (taking in the waist, seat, crotch, maybe the thighs, shortening and cuffing the pants, etc.) you may find yourself spending more in alterations than you save by buying it on e-bay.
Another option is “suit separates” where you can pick a suitcoat and matching trousers in different sizes. A lot of old-fashioned department and men’s stores have at least one line of moderately priced separates.
To use your own analogy, it’s not buying hot dogs vs. buying a steak, it’s making hot dogs.
Well, you could if you don’t mind people calling you Droopy Drawers. If the pants are that big, you’ll need to pretty much need the pants completely remade, and you do NOT want a pair of suit pants to be your first foray into clothing construction. Even simple alterations like hemming can be difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Wesley. My boy, I’m feeling fatherly towards you. Probably because I’m old enough to be your Dad, but that’s another issue.
Life is too short to look like a doofus. Spend the money for a good suit and have it properly tailored to fit your body. It may sound bogus to you, but darn near every town has a great store with smart looking suits, courteous men skilled in fitting you, and they won’t dent your pocket.
Don’t buy a suit off e-bay. In order to get a suit that’s going to look good on you, you need to be able to try it on, look in the mirror, move in it.
Go to any reputable department store or men’s store. Tell them, straight up, “I need a suit. I’ll be wearing it for [work, only every once in awhile, a funeral, a wedding, etc.]. I’d like to spend [insert $$ here].” The haberdasher will show you a range of suits. You take your pick, try it on, and go from there.
If you just buy a suit without any of that, and then try to go to a tailor and get it altered just so it fits, you’re going to be really disappointed in the results AND you’ll be out the cost of the suit and the alterations.
How much money are we talking about here? My parents paid for my last suit (in highschool) and I don’t remember how much it cost. I just remember thinking that all of them were pretty expensive.
Gunslinger bought a vintage suit off eBay. My mother took the pants in for him, but the jacket’s still a bit too large - he’s a tiny guy. We also don’t like the shape of the jacket - it’s very boxy and that doesn’t really work for him. How much do you think it would run for a tailor to take the jacket in to make it about an inch or two smaller in the chest, and nip the waist in a bit to make it more “european” style?
Depending on timing and budget you could look at Asian tailors. There are a few sites online that accept measurements and will ship you tailor made articles.
Pierre Boutique offer deals like 2 suits 2 shirts 2 trousers for $499. Their suits are cashmere wool, silk and linen.
MyCustomTailor has terrific information on how to take precise measurements for tailored clothing. Check out the forms here.
I know several people who regularly order from Asian tailors. Admittedly they first started buying stuff while over there but several order new stuff when they want.
Advice on a young man’s first suit. The SDMB equivalent of a father taking his son to a cat house to lose his virginity.
First things first. You can go to an outlet/discount store and get a perfectly serviceable suit (appropriate for “I gotta have a suit for work” uses) for $100-$150, not including alterations.
Don’t buy a suit unless you’ve tried it on, and are reasonably happy with the way it looks and fits. A lot of suitcoats may fit right across the chest, but be too long or too short. Suit pants tend to be higher-waisted than jeans or casual pants. European-cut suits definitely fit differently than traditional American-cut.
Alterations are for minor adjustments, not for taking William Howard Taft’s inaugural cutaway and trying to make it look good on Jimmy Carter. Anything more than cuffing the pants to the proper length and shortening the sleeves a little – find yourself a pro, or better yet, find a different suit.
If you need to have extensive alterations, get a simply cut, dark, solid-colored suit, so the tailor doesn’t have to work around the fabric design.
While you’re buying a suit, buy a couple of ties to go with it. One of the subtle points of men’s style is matching the width of the tie to the width of the lapels. That’s why your father had ties ranging from 2" to 4" in the back of the closet.
A good tailor will take a holistic approach to the suit – take a little in here, let a little out there.
And, to echo danceswithcats life is too short. If you’re going to drop a couple of Benjamins (or a lot more), spend an extra 10% or so for someone who knows how to make you look good in it.
You don’t want either, you need a suit that fits. You also need to have matching shirts / ties / shoes, otherwise you look silly. I’m guessing that isn’t the effect you’re after.
There’s no way to judge how a suit wil fit you if you buy it without trying it on. You can’t see what the fabric is like. You need to go to a real strore. I bought a new suit a few years back from Menswearhouse. I went into the store expecting a disaster, but they actually have a good combination of decent clothes and staff who aren’t total idiots. I came out with a really nice suit.
OK, here’s some hard, and unpleasant, data for you.
It sounds like I have a problem similar to yours, albeit on a smaller scale. The issue is what’s known in tailoring as the “drop” - the difference between the size of the chest and the size of the trouser waist. In my experience, most American suits seem to come with about a 6" drop - that is, on a size 42 suit, the trousers will have a 36" waist. Some European suits (especially Italian) come with a 7" drop. But I think that’s the most I’ve seen.
Last time I bought a suit, my drop was over 9". This poses an expensive problem.
The cheapest way to reduce the waist on trousers is to take fabric out of the rear seam - the one between yer buttcheeks. The fact that only one seam needs to be broken makes it much less labor-intensive. Unfortunately, you usually can’t take more than about 1.5" out that way before the pockets end up overlapping, and that would be a big fashion “don’t” - besides making the pockets useless.
To take more out of the waist, the trousers need to be entirely recut - in other words, all three seams (waist and both legs) need to get ripped out and redone. In my experience, with a decent tailor, this operation will cost a minimum of $125. And you don’t want to spend much less on a cheaper tailor because the results can be disastrous.
That is why for guys like you and me, separates can be a much more cost-effective way to go, even though that results in fewer options, usually.
Moral of the story: never buy a suit that you can’t try on, because you can easily spend well over the suit’s inital cost in tailoring. That $125 on the trousers may only be the beginning - god help you if the jacket also needs work that’s much more complicated than adjusting the sleeve length.
So I should just try to fix Gunny’s jacket myself? I mean, shit, I can make it look right on the outside by putting a safety pin in. It can’t be any more complicated than a dart on each side of the waist.
An inch or so, which you mentioned in your earlier post, is a lot of material to take in without throwing the hang of the jacket out of whack. One of the big problems is the shoulders can bulge so much that Gunny might end up looking like Joan Collins in Dynasty.
However, if you know how to put darts in a dress, then you know how to put them in a suit jacket (except for that unfortunate part about ripping out and replacing the lining. Cheapest bet is to pin it up, see how it looks and feels, and then go for it.
Oh, you may also need to dart the back seam, as well.
Google on “bespoke” if you want to learn about havng a suit made. The difference in fit between an off the rack suit that is adjusted and a suit made via fittings is often tremendous.