The Glenwood Guide — Editorial
The Rules, And When To Break Them
Six conventions worth knowing, each with the reason it exists — because a rule you understand is one you can set aside on purpose.
Nearly every convention in tailoring started as a practical solution to something. Once you know what the problem was, you can tell whether it still applies to you — and that is the only reliable way to know which rules are worth keeping.
Six worth knowing
- Never fasten the bottom button of a two- or three-button jacket. The reason is mechanical: the jacket is cut with the buttoning point as its pivot, and fastening below it drags the fronts closed and breaks the drape. Worth keeping — it is not manners, it is how the garment works.
- Show about half an inch of shirt cuff. The reason is proportion: cuff and collar frame the hands and the face. Half an inch is a convention rather than a law, and taller men often look better with slightly more.
- Trouser break is a decision, not a default. Full break, slight break or none changes the line of the entire leg. Pick one deliberately and tell your tailor — and bring the shoes.
- Black tie means a bow tie. This one really is a rule, in that a long tie with a dinner jacket reads as somebody who did not know. If you want to depart from black tie, depart properly rather than halfway.
- Match leather to leather — belt to shoes. Useful, easy, and the sort of thing people notice without knowing they noticed.
- Never wear brown in town. Expired. It was about London, coal smoke and a century ago, and tobacco or olive is among the most useful things you can own in the South.
The pattern across all six: rules about how the garment functions are worth obeying, and rules about where you happen to be standing usually are not.
Where This Leads
Bespoke SuitingBegin Here
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