Most people would not describe Trump as someone who wears slim-fit clothes. But here, we can see his trousers are quite slim in relationship to his body. You can tell because the hem barely covers the opening of his shoes.
If you're a heavier man who wears a suit with slim-fit trousers, you end up breaking the top and bottom halves into distinct blocks. Notice how much the jacket hangs over the trousers. There's a lot of empty space between the jacket's front edge and his pants.
It's a mistake to think that wearing slim-fit clothes makes you look slimmer. Or that everyone has to conform to some trend. A better approach is to dress for your body type. Look at the relationship between Jackie Gleason's jacket and pants.
The wider trousers here are not the most fashionable, but they are the most flattering (for him). By minimizing the jacket's overhang and reducing the empty space between its front edge and the trousers, you get a streamlined silhouette from top to bottom.
We see the same effect here on France’s President Hollande and Japan’s Emperor Akihito. Hollande's trousers are too slim for his jacket. As a result, he looks like an egg on sticks. Compare his silhouette to Akihito, where the jacket and pants flow and form a harmonious whole.
Such advice is not limited to men with heavier figures. Daniel Craig often wears suits that also don't flow. The top and bottom halves often form distinct blocks. This is partly because his trousers are too slim and his jackets are too short.
When you see beautifully dressed men, consider how the top and bottom halves form a silhouette. They don't always need to flow (in some casual styles, breaking up these parts can be intentional and part of an aesthetic). But in tailoring, it's often best when there is flow.
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Not true. Both Joe Biden and Gavin Newsom wear ready-to-wear or factor-made clothes produced on a block pattern.
I'll show you how I know. 🧵
First, what do you notice about this jacket?
For me, the glaring issue is how far the sleeve comes down.
In a 1966 essay titled "The Secret Vice," Tom Wolfe wrote about men obsessed with custom tailoring. He talked about "marginal differences" such as working buttonholes.
On first glance, you may be impressed but not know why.
The reason is deceptively simple: they hang pin straight. This is more obvious when you compare them to trousers that don't hang so cleanly.
It's not easy to get trousers to hang this straight. There are a few reasons for this.
First, if you were to take off all your clothes and look in the mirror (do this privately, not on the internet), you'll notice your body is not perfectly symmetrical.
As some may know, my family is from Vietnam. My parents fled Saigon shortly after the Tet Offensive, as bombs were falling around them and they weren't sure what was going to happen once the North Vietnamese took over the city.
When my dad left Vietnam, he wasn't able to take much with him — just some family photos of life back home, some clothes, and a 1960s Rolex Datejust he bought as a present for himself. Growing up, I always saw my dad wear this watch. It was basically part of his body.
Earlier this year, it was reported that JD Vance has a tailor in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was a charming story about an Italian immigrant named Romualdo Pelle, who has worked as a tailor since he immigrated to the US in 1960.
Watch the story very closely. What do you notice?
Those familiar with tailoring will see something very peculiar:
In the 19th century, gentlemen wore black frock coats or tailcoats with a white shirt and dark waistcoat. As the frock coat gave way to the suit, the white linen shirt — a mark of respectability and propriety — remained.
For much of the 20th century, this was the standard uniform of the American male that sat at any social station above blue collar. And even then, blue collar people often wore these clothes to churches and weddings.
A couple of weeks ago, Trump struggled with a broken umbrella as he boarded Air Force One.
Let me tell you how we got to this point — and the tragic downfall of the noble umbrella. 🧵
It's hard to imagine now, but it was once controversial for a man to carry an umbrella. The modern umbrella's progenitor, of course, is the parasol, which 18th century French women carried to preserve their light-colored skin (at the time, a mark of class and status).
British men considered the accessory too French, too foreign, and most importantly, too effeminate. That was until 1756, when Jonas Hanway, an upper-class philanthropist, started to carry a waterproofed version around London to protect himself from the rain.