Measuring at home: the four numbers people get wrong
Shoulder, waist, neck and sleeve. Take these four properly and the first fitting is usually the last.
You can order without ever coming in. Thirteen measurements, a soft tape and twenty minutes, and we cut from those. Most of them are easy. Four are not, and the same four come back wrong nearly every time.
None of them is difficult once you know what the mistake is.
1. Shoulder width
Point to point, straight across the back, from the crease at the back of one armpit to the other. The mistake is following the curve of the body up over the neck instead of measuring straight across. That adds several centimetres, and a jacket cut to it hangs off you.
This is the one measurement you genuinely cannot take alone. Ask somebody.
2. The jacket waist
The waist we need is level with the navel, not where your trousers sit. It is usually the larger of the two, and giving us the trouser waist is the most common error on the whole form.
Take it from the back, round to the front, level all the way. Snug, breathing normally, and without pulling in.
3. The neck
Round the base of the neck, where a collar sits, snug enough that one fingertip fits underneath and no more. The mistake is adding room to be comfortable. We add the collar allowance ourselves, so a padded measurement comes back as a loose collar, and there is nothing to be done about that afterwards except cut a new one.
4. Sleeve length
From the outer shoulder point, straight down the outside of a hanging arm, to the wrist bone on the little-finger side. The mistake is bending the arm to read the tape. A bent arm measures short and the cuff finishes above the wrist.
If you want more or less cuff showing, say so separately. Do not build the preference into the number: we read the measurement and the preference side by side, and we can only do that if they arrive apart.
The rest of it
The other nine are straightforward, and the form tells you the common mistake on each one as you go. It also flags anything that reads oddly against the rest, which is not an accusation. A waist that measures as large as the chest is perfectly possible. It is worth checking the tape once before it becomes a jacket.
- Wear a thin shirt. Never bare skin, never over a jacket.
- Use a soft sewing tape. A string, marked and then measured flat, works too.
- Empty your pockets before you take the seat and the waist.
- Take the shoulder, the jacket length and the waist to ankle with a helper.
