Pattern Presicison

Fellow fashionista and menswear blogger Victorianizer has brought this rather interesting series of vintage fashion illustrations to my attention.

What you see below, are a sample of sheets from a pattern for a German 1920s double-breasted lounge suit. The long flared skirt, suppressed waist, expressed chest and close wrap of the four by four closure makes for an extremely elegant cut as you can see, but I thought these images would give us a rare opportunity to look closely at a draft of a pattern and to explore how the form of the body is negotiated by the tailor's eye.

The two terms expression and suppression which I use above may not be familiar to you. There are a number of ways in which I could explain these two concepts, but I often find that the most helpful way to think of the two, are as opposing techniques. A tailor will construct different parts of the garment in different ways. Sometimes structure will be added, like the chest canvass or shoulder pads. This is expression, whereby a part of the body is 'expressed' or enhanced creating a fuller chest or stronger shoulder for example. Other parts of the suit will 'suppress' the body, creating a narrow or slimmer waist for example. This will be achieved by sculpting shape into the garment without using any underlying structure; through the use of darting, shaping seams, stretching and working the cloth. One technique tends to add shape by building structure into the garment, and the other is structure-less.

It was the emergence of the lounge suit in the early years of the 20th century which really saw tailors experimenting with form-fitting garments for the first time. The tailcoat, Epsom coats and frock coats of the Victorian era did not have to use structure in the same way given their long, looser shape and in many cases, the quality of cloth was so coarse that there was only a limited amount a tailor could hope to do with it. The 20s and 30s therefore marked a golden era for men's tailoring, the lounge suit was in, popular and cloth weaving technology had improved greatly in a relatively short space of time. The result was increased experimentation in shaping a garment.

The emphasis on an almost exaggerated silhouette can been very clearly in the pattern below. Take note of the huge amount of darting and segmentation of a number of cloth panels to work the cloth into shape around the waist in both the jacket and around the seat of the trousers. Note also the focus on a closeness of fit. There isn't much fullness in the chest, the shoulder line is clean and slim, the jacket's waist is suppressed very strongly and the chest expressed (structured to add body) clearly. The collar is cut close to sit neatly against a 20s statement starched shirt collar.

Note also the emphasis on symmetry and design, whoever produced this pattern was good - they thought through the aesthetics, as well as the practical construction of the garment. There are two buttonholes on the lapels and two buttons on each cuff to match the four fastening buttons on the jacket breast. The darts visible on the front of the jacket are cut long and deep to really add a lot of curvature in the chest. They're cut long because not only is the skirt long, but the jacket breaks high - note how unlike most modern double-breasted suits, this suit's bottom set of buttons fasten on the waist - not the top set, raising the fastening up onto the chest. The darts also run into the inside edge of the coat's horizontal jetted pockets, the jets of which are suitably chunky to suit the long line of the coat. In line with the jacket's high break, the waist is set a little higher, and features a lot of quite sharp suppression; it tapers deeply around the wearer's waist.

To achieve a sharp, high-set hourglass waist like this, the excess cloth that feeds through into the coat's skirt and quarters must be eased through gently, and you can see from the way that the jacket's side panels are designed to flare strongly that there is a real emphasis on draping the skirt neatly.

The vent is cut right up to the small of the back (again in 20s fashion), with a view to draping the heavy skirt more elegantly over the seat of the trousers at the rear. This also aids accessibility into the trouser pockets, which are higher than on a modern trouser, given that the trouser pattern reveals (again in 20s style) that the rise on these trousers is high and the trouser is designed to sit around the natural waist of the wearer. The trousers also feature darts running into the waistband, which creates a little fullness in the thigh of the trouser leg to comfortably accommodate larger leg shapes if need's be.

Sometimes, there's a real delight in taking the time to go back to basics and think through a piece of tailoring design at its most fundamental. I hope that this makes for interesting contemplation for you too.