Ezra Paul Men's Clothing Blog — sport coat

As men’s clothing has undergone a drastic conversion from an all-time peak of bagginess in the early 2000s to the much more fitted styles of today, a lot of attention has been devoted to the laggards who have been slow to adapt. I recently wrote about Donald Trump’s baggy suits and he certainly isn’t alone in his outdated style sensibilities. However, I’ve noticed a pretty severe overcorrection in some crowds in response to the excessive bagginess of the 1990s and 2000s. Honey, I Shrunk Your Suit Starting in the middle of the 2000s, men’s clothing started to gradually slim down....

The last several blog posts have focused on jacket construction – this time I’m concentrating on garment care, since the two are intrinsically connected when it comes to longevity. Garment care is multifaceted, but the largest issues I encounter surround a general misunderstanding of dry cleaning – particularly why a garment should be cleaned. What is dry cleaning and why should I have a garment professionally cleaned? To understand why, it is important to understand what dry cleaning is exactly. Most people know that woolen goods generally can’t be laundered or dried. Tumbling in water will destroy the guts of a...

If you've been following this blog, you'll remember that I have been deconstructing suits at various price points to show how they are made. So far I’ve examined a $500 Jos. A. Bank suit and a $1,500 Z Zegna suit. This week we are taking a big jump in price to a $4,000 Tom Ford suit: As the former creative director for Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, Ford is one of the most prominent and influential designers of the 21st century thus far. His suits and sport coats are generally designed with a heavily structured shoulder and he was an...

As I've discussed in previous posts, suit and sport coat design and trends are more about playing with details than reinventing the wheel - wide vs. narrow lapels, short vs. long jacket length, etc. One of the most important, and often overlooked details is the shoulder type. While most people have observed that the shoulder width of jackets has narrowed dramatically from the early 90s to today, the type of shoulder - that is how it is constructed - is a more subtle detail and can be telling of a jacket's pedigree. It's important to understand that the amount of shoulder padding and the...

This is the first post in a series where I will cut open and deconstruct suits at various price points to display their guts and discuss what's going on inside. With most articles of clothing, the quality is fairly easy to ascertain just by handling the garment. Suits and sport coats, however, require a layer between the fabric and the lining and there are several different methods for creating this "skeleton" of sorts. Broadly speaking, the price of a suit is based on a few basic elements: Fabric - The wholesale price of a yard of fabric varies dramatically. It may...