3 Piece Grey For A Spring Wedding

Light grey suits are the most popular choice for Spring weddings because it goes so well with any colour--in particular, powdery pastel colours. Grey forms a neutral background that would make any light or bright colour pop. 

You can be sure that whatever your colour scheme is for your wedding day, your grey suit will not clash with it. And a great photography tip for those tricky wedding pictures: It used to be a pain for wedding photographers to pick the right exposure for the bride and groom photographs because of the high contrast between a black suit and a white dress. What would a photographer expose for: The really dark black suit or the really bright white dress? Depending on the photographer's choice of exposure, someone in the picture would either be washed out or look too dark.

Thanks to Photoshop, that problem could be avoided but still requires the photographer to do a bit of prep work before taking the photos.

If you feel inclined to help your photographer out or want to ensure that your pictures are correctly exposed or you just love the colour, try a light grey suit!

Check out this 3 piece grey suit that we made for Nathan:

Nathan's mom made this self-tie bowtie for him!

Thanks Nathan for sharing your suit!

Resurgence of the Wide Lapels

If you're one to pay attention to fashion, there is no doubt that you know in the world of fashion, every style and trend that's ever been thought of in the history of mankind will eventually make its way back into the modern times. 

For the past 5-6 years, the two most popular suit cuts around the world have been the British and the Italian styles. Both styles are characterized by the slimness throughout the entire length of the body, with the Italian style being tighter than its UK counterpart.

You've all seen these styles displayed in the windows of large clothing retail stores: undersized to tight-fitting jackets with shirt cuff-exposing jacket sleeves and almost-too-short skinny trousers that hit at or above the ankles. Most often, you'll see narrow lapels adorn these suit jackets.

Lapels. Lapels is the focus of this blog entry. 

There has been a resurgence of the wider lapels visible on catwalks, recent tv shows, blockbusters and magazines. For the first time in many years, I'm being asked by customers to design a suit for them that features lapels that are wider than 2.5" or 2.75". 

The above pictures showcase a custom navy suit that we recently made for a really good-looking young man who has been our loyal customer for years. Notice the width of the lapels? Those are 3.75" wide! I'll call our model, Andrew, since he wishes to remain anonymous due to professional reasons.

During Andrew's earlier visits, he would request simple clean-looking suits in various colours but all of them had the same skinny lapels. With his model-like features and towering height, we knew he would carry our suits well. Our business is to make people look good but Andrew made our suits LOOK REALLY GOOD.

Time passed and we saw Andrew again recently. He said he wanted some new suits made but with wider lapels. "How wide?" I asked. "This wide," he replied. His thumb and index finger indicated four inches of width. 

I smiled. "Wow. That's really wide. Um, why don't we try 3.75" or even 3.5" first?" We discussed this topic for quite some time. There was a lot of uncertainty because he hadn't seen himself in a wide-lapel suit before. He'd only seen them on actors on tv.

I didn't think it would be an issue. I knew it wouldn't be an issue for Andrew to wear wide lapels. He is really tall and has 20" wide shoulders. That's a really broad shoulder width. Most men have shoulders anywhere between 17" to 21". 

Here's a good way to figure out the maximum lapel width for yourself before you end up looking goofy: Your lapel tip generally shouldn't cross the imaginary halfway line of your shoulder. Check out the diagram below to better understand what I mean.

I just want to remind everyone that style is very personal. I simply inform people of what is currently the most popular trend according to the fashion industry and what my customers commonly ask for. But if you have a preferred style, say you like the skinny lapels, by all means, rock it and keep rocking it!

So there you have it. Wide lapels aren't out of style anymore. They have come back and is starting to make their way back into men's wardrobes! 

Perhaps try out a new style?

Stay Warm in a Hot Chocolate Suit

Holy! Wait a minute here. It's January?! I looked outside my window this morning and thought it was still November. Darn rain clouds! It's easy to forget what month we're in considering most of our months are indistinguishable. Fluffy white snow would've been a more welcoming sight.

Us Van City folks are experts in staving off the evil wet winter blues, aren't we? We're world champions of perpetualy cold, dark, drizzly weather.  Vancouver is where you'll see day blend seamlessly into night. So seamlessly, that we can't even tell day from night or night from day. Waking up would be a big confusion if it weren't for those alarm clocks screaming into our ears in the early morning, to remind us to get our little butts out of bed and into work.  We make our fellow Earth mates down in the Southern Hemisphere confused. They wonder why we put ourselves through such needless torment--living up here in the North and all.

Winters are always tough here. It's never truly the ideal white winter that we all dream of. We get mostly the wet stuff in Vancouver. 

Alright, it's not that bad. There are perks to living in this gloomy city: If you wait long enough, say maybe about 9-10 months, you get a wonderful 2-3 months of mild summer. What's not to like about that?!

That's one perk. I'll let you figure out the rest when you warm weather folks come here.

While all you Southern Hemisphere people get to bask in the abundance of sweet sweet sunlight, us Vancouverites have gotten pretty creative when it comes to keeping ourselves toasty. Fuzzy blankets, blazing fireplace, woolie socks, steaming hot cocoa, brawny boyfriends to curl up to, sizzling hot girlfriends to cozy up to, fine tailored suits, and...

YAH, that's right! We have nice suits! And Balsam Tailors make them. TAKE THAT!

Balsam Tailors make scorching hot suits. That's how we roll up on the West Coast. ;)

And George here, is decked out in all Balsam gear. Shirt + Suit.

You've got mad skills George! Hope you're keeping warm in that h-h-hot chocolate suit.

And thanks for sending in this picture!