Fashion is what a garment is this year. Fit is what it is on you, every year. When the two disagree, fit wins — a perfectly cut piece from five seasons ago outshines this month’s trend worn loose and hopeful.
The eye reads fit before it reads anything else. A shoulder that sits where your shoulder ends, a sleeve that breaks at the wrist bone, a hem that meets the shoe — these register as quality long before the cloth or the label does.
The alterations worth paying for
Sleeve length, first and always. A jacket sleeve should end where the base of the thumb meets the wrist, showing a centimetre of shirt cuff. It is the cheapest alteration and the one that changes the most.
Take in the waist of a blazer before you touch anything else on it. A little shape through the body turns a boxy jacket into a tailored one, and a good tailor does it in an afternoon. Trouser hems, taken to the right break for your shoe, do the same for the leg.
Leave the shoulders alone. Reworking a shoulder means dismantling the jacket, and the cost rarely justifies it — buy for the shoulder, alter everything else. This is the one rule the fitting room never bends.
Fashion will move again by spring. A garment that fits will not need to.
