For whoever is holding the tape
How to measure someone for a suit
Most guides on this are written for the man being measured. This one is written for the person measuring him, because that is the side we deal with. We never meet your customer. What reaches us is a set of numbers and a cloth, and everything about that body that is not in the numbers is not in the garment. So the useful question is not which measurements exist, it is which ones you can recover from and which ones end in a new garment. They are not the same list, and the difference is worth knowing before the tape comes out rather than after the fitting.
What each mistake actually costs
| Recoverable in alteration | Expensive but fixable | Means a new garment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Which fields sit here | Waist and stomach on the jacket. Sleeve length. Trouser length and leg opening. | Front length. Thigh, knee and total rise on the trouser. Bicep. | Shoulder. Back length. Chest, once it is out by enough to move the balance. |
| How it shows on the customer | The jacket sits fine but reads loose or short at one point. The eye finds it, a tailor fixes it. | The garment works but never sits comfortably in one place, and altering it moves a seam that was not meant to move. | The collar stands away from the neck, or the jacket swings forward or back. Nothing you do at the seams corrects it. |
| Most common cause | Tape tension. Pulled tight on one measurement and relaxed on the next. | Measuring over the customer's own trousers instead of at the body, then guessing the difference. | Taking shoulder and back length alone, or on a customer standing differently than he stands in life. |
| What it costs | A local alteration and a short conversation. | An alteration your tailor will not enjoy, and sometimes a compromise the customer notices. | The garment, the freight in both directions, and a second production cycle. Ours runs 14 to 20 working days. |
| How to avoid it | Same tension every time. Snug, flat, not pulled. | Measure the body, and send us the body. We add the ease. | Two people, or a shop. Shoulder and back length cannot be taken honestly on yourself. |
This table is why we ask for 31 required fields rather than a friendly handful. Each required one is there because at some point somebody left it out and the garment came back.
The fields people most often get wrong
Real field names from the order form, not a generic list. If it is not here, do not invent it.
- Shoulder
- Across the back from one shoulder point to the other. This is the single most expensive field on the form. A shoulder cut too wide cannot be narrowed without rebuilding the armhole and resetting the sleeve, which is most of the jacket. Take it twice and take it on a relaxed, natural stance.
- Back length
- From the base of the neck down to where the jacket should finish. It decides the balance of the whole garment against front length, and a jacket that swings is almost always these two disagreeing rather than the chest being wrong. Not a field to estimate.
- Chest, front chest, back chest
- Three separate fields, not one measured three ways. The chest circumference tells us the size. Front chest and back chest tell us how it is distributed, which is what separates two men with an identical chest measurement and completely different builds. Skipping the last two is why generic sizing fits nobody in particular.
- Stomach
- Taken at the fullest point, which is often not where the jacket waist is. It exists as its own field because a jacket cut only from waist will pull open on a customer whose stomach is fuller than his waist, and that pull shows in every photograph he takes.
- Sleeve length
- Where you start matters more than where you stop. Agree a start point and use it every time, because a centimetre of inconsistency here is invisible to you and obvious on the wrist. This is the field most often measured differently by two people in the same shop.
- Total rise
- The trouser field labelled u_crotch on the form. Front rise is separate. Together they decide where the trouser sits, and a trouser at the wrong rise is uncomfortable in a way the customer will describe as the size being wrong when it is not.
- Ease
- The room added on top of the body measurement so the garment can be worn and moved in. We add it. If you add it too, it gets added twice, and the customer receives something a size larger than either of you intended. Send the body.
- Posture
- How the customer actually stands: forward head, one shoulder lower, a rounded or an erect back. Not a tape measurement, but the reason two men with identical numbers need different balance. Note it in the comments field. It costs you one sentence and it is often worth more than any single number.
What we get asked by shops taking their first measurements
What measurements are needed for a suit?
For a jacket, thirteen: chest, waist, stomach, seat, shoulder, bicep, sleeve length, front length, back length, neck, front chest, back chest, and sleeve cuff. For the trouser, nine: waist, hip, total rise, front rise, thigh, knee, calf, leg opening, and trouser length. Waistcoat adds eleven and shirt twelve. Our form carries 47 fields in total, of which 31 are required. The required ones are not required because we like paperwork. Each of them is on that list because a garment once came back for want of it.
Can I just send the customer's suit size?
No, and this is the most common thing we have to send back. A 42R is not a measurement, it is a shelf. It tells us roughly what chest the customer buys off the rack, nothing about his shoulder, nothing about how he is built front to back, and nothing about the two fields most likely to end in a remake. If a size is all you have, we would rather you sent us a garment he already wears and likes, measured flat, than the label from it.
Should I measure the body or a garment he already owns?
Either works, as long as you tell us which one you did. Body measurements plus posture notes are the better input. A well-fitting garment measured flat is the better fallback, and it is genuinely useful because it encodes decisions the customer has already made about how he likes to wear things. What causes trouble is a mix of the two in the same form without saying so, because we cannot tell which fields carry ease and which do not.
Do I add ease myself?
Please do not. We add ease as part of the pattern, sized to the construction and the cloth, because a heavier cloth and a soft jacket need different amounts of it. If you have already added two centimetres to be safe and we add ours on top, the customer opens a parcel containing a jacket a size too big and nobody can see from the numbers where it went wrong. Send the body and tell us if he likes things close or easy.
Can someone measure himself?
For chest, waist and trouser length, at a push, yes. For shoulder and back length, no, and we would rather you did not try. Both require the tape to sit flat across a part of the body you cannot see while standing normally, and the act of reaching around changes the stance you are trying to record. Those two are also the two on the expensive side of the table above. If a customer is ordering remotely and alone, ask him to find a second person for those fields or to send a jacket instead.
How tight should the tape be?
Snug and flat, the same on every field. Consistency matters more than the absolute value, because a set of numbers taken uniformly slightly loose still describes one coherent body, while a set taken tight in some places and loose in others describes a body that does not exist. If two people in your shop measure, agree the tension and the sleeve start point between you before either of them takes an order.
What happens if a measurement turns out to be wrong?
It depends entirely which one. Waist, stomach, sleeve and trouser length are usually absorbed by a local alteration. Shoulder and back length are not, and that means a new garment plus freight both ways plus a second cycle, so the delay is never just the delay. Before you place volume with anyone, us included, ask them to put the fault, rework and freight split in writing. A supplier who will not write that sentence has answered the question.
Do you need the customer's photographs?
They help, and for posture they help more than the numbers do. A plain standing shot from the front and one from the side, in a fitted shirt, natural stance, no posing. We are not judging anyone's build. We are looking for the forward head and the dropped shoulder that no tape will report and that decide whether the collar sits.
Measure once, on a form that asks the right questions
If your shop is about to take its first made-to-measure orders, the form matters as much as the tape. Ask us for ours and use it as a checklist even if you never place an order.