Every gamer, when searching for a piece of hardware, knows enough to assiduously check the specs of whatever shiny object is being perused prior to purchase. Any one searching for a new car does due diligence on things such as mileage, servicing history and other troublesome details tied to the messy business of car ownership. A suit should get the same kind of thoroughness from any prospective purchaser. Recently I have been going through my wardrobe and putting together a suit inventory, the purpose being to give me a clear view of what gaps potentially need filling as I slowly but surely expand my sartorial collection. The more of menswear YouTube I consume, and the more of classic men’s style I read up on, the more importance I am attaching to something I admit I once overlooked – the weight of a suit fabric. It goes without saying that during the summer, lighter suits should be preferred, and during the winter, heavier ones. There is just one thorny problem – retailers rarely attach the weight of the fabric in ounces to any description of the product. I therefore had to admit to myself that I had little idea which of my suits were ‘heavier’ beyond how they felt to the touch and on my body.
The craze for Italian tailoring has favoured softer, lightweight suits at the expense of heavier, rougher ones. Mills and retailers alike shamelessly flog their ‘super 100s’ fabrics as if they give any reliable indication of quality. However, these qualifiers pertain more to the fineness and softness of the fabric more than the weight. As I went about putting together my inventory, it occurred to me that weight was a key piece of information I would require to put my inventory together. I set about scouring the Internet for the information. Brook Taverner very helpfully got back to me with a nice, round figure for my Charcoal Grey Birdseye suit – 10oz, if anyone is interested in purchasing it. My dark blue Moss Bros’ suit proved a bit more work, but luckily I had been given a useful clue – the insignia of Ermenegildo Zegna was proudly sewn into the lining, and I was able to track down what I think is the matching fabric on their website, which gave me a figure of 9oz.
The same was true for my Charcoal Grey Italian Flannel Suit from Charles Tyrwhitt, a product long since discontinued – a bummer, because I have a pair of worn suit trousers which I am only able to keep wearing because the local tailor helpfully sewed the crotch area back together. Luckily, I was able to find the fabric on the Vitale Barberis Canonico website, and with it, a figure of 12oz. (Converting the original ‘grams per square metre’ figure was a matter of quick Googling.) I am toying with the idea of purchasing the fabric and having new suit trousers made by an external tailor.
My made-to-measure suit from Edit Suits Co. has proven trickier. The fabric in question is apparently discontinued, and inquiries to both Edit Suits and the supplier, Vitale Barberis Canonico, have been unsuccessful. It largely revolves around the fact that the code Edit Suits (or the manufacturer it uses) used for the fabric is not something VBC has on their books. I have nevertheless been able to find at least one or two blue fabrics on their site that may correspond to what was used on my suit, but perhaps under different numbers. From this I estimate that the suit fabric is about 9oz.
This little escapade has been time-consuming, but fun. It has taught me a lot about the state of the suit industry. Judging by the predominance of suits below 12oz in my wardrobe, it is clear to me that your average suit nowadays tends towards the lighter side. Living in a country with a temperate climate, with relatively mild winters and summers (though climate change is making the latter somewhat less moderate as the years go by), this is no great problem. However, I would like to have at least one or two heavier suits in my collection to balance things out and make my wardrobe as versatile as possible. In the depths of winter, I found that the most reliable way to keep out the cold, besides wearing an overcoat when outside, was to make sure I was wearing my lambswool V-neck sweaters from Cordings underneath my suit at all times. It did its job very well (and provided a nice opportunity for layering and adding colour to my outfit), but it would also be nice to have suits which are more insulating in the first place. Perhaps that is simply an excuse for me to buy more suits.
Recently I saw a nice navy flannel suit being sold on the Hawes and Curtis website as part of their recent sales. I thought that having a navy flannel suit would make a great complement to my charcoal grey suit from Charles Tyrwhitt, and help me balance out my wardrobe more in terms of the seasonality of the fabrics. Once again, there was no information about the fabric weight. I contacted the company to enquire and was told that the garment as a whole weighs 1.25kg (1250g), but beyond that, no information could be given. I took what little I was given and ran with it. After some frantic googling and AI-assisted calculations, I came out with the round figure of 13oz (rounded up from 12.6). This was based on the calculation that the average suit uses 3.5m of fabric, which gave me the following:
Slightly weightier than my Charles Tyrwhitt flannel suit, and selling for a good price. Was I not already spending too much money, I would have added it to my wardrobe instantly.
Another motivation for purchasing heavier suits is that they are known to drape better, and, as my suit collection expands, I find that I can increasingly afford to move past mere functionality and think more about how the things look on me. Not that I never gave thought to this in the past, but, having learned more about suits in recent months, and, having quite a small, functional collection already, I see no harm in venturing into new territory.
Casually browsing online for other options for heavyweight suits, I have found at least one or two exceptions to the rule that online retailers don’t advertise the fabric weight of their suits. There is Cordings, an English country-focused brand which markets heavier items of clothing, and which did actually have a 14oz suit in stock at one point. They also have other suits on which the fabric weights are proudly displayed. There is also Brian Sacawa’s He Spoke Style site, which generously provides the mill, fabric and fabric weight of its jackets, all in one compact description section. I don’t quite understand why mainstream retailers don’t take more time and effort to do this – perhaps they are simply coasting on consumer ignorance, and think none but the truly obsessive suit purchaser will care exactly how thick or thin a given fabric is. To the untrained eye, a suit is a suit, and these little nuances of fabric type and weight matter not a jot. Perhaps they fear overcomplicating the product. I could be even more conspiratorial and suggest that they would like the consumer to remain in blissful ignorance, as that means they don’t have to maintain and even upgrade their standards. This is most unfortunate.
From now on, I am going to do what I advise everyone reading this to do – before you buy a suit, check to see if there is information about the fabric weight, and if there isn’t, badger the living daylights out of the company for any scrap of information they might have that will lead you in that direction. We all have a right to know every little detail of the clothing we pay so dearly for.
Here is the suit inventory if you were interested:
Suit Inventory
Edit Suits (Bespoke/MTM) – Royal Blue Single-Breasted Suit with Peak Lapels, 9oz (£599)
Moss Bros – Navy Single-Breasted Suit With Notch Lapels, 9oz (£499)
Charles Tyrwhitt – Charcoal Grey Italian Flannel Single-Breasted Suit With Notch Lapels, 12oz (£249)
Berwin – Navy Blazer (weight unknown) (£21.50 from Ebay)
Brook Taverner – Regular Fit Dawlish Charcoal Birdseye Wool Suit, Single-Breasted, Notch Lapels, 10oz (£273.95)
Charles Tyrwhitt – Black Tie Ensemble (£374.61)
Charles Tyrwhitt – Linen Suit in Airforce Blue, Single-Breasted, Notch Lapels (£324.15)