Armholes: The dreaded scye!
Much talk goes on about something called scye, or armhole. This is an aspect of Bespoke coats that is extremely important, both for the comfort as well as for the appearance of the wearer.
Please have a look at this photo:
This is an old Ready-To-Wear coat of a well-known Italian producer that I’ve taken apart for the purpose of this example.
Under it is a striped coat I’m working on at the moment. You can just see a bit of the striped fabric in the lower part of the armhole. The white ruler shows that, altough there is only one size difference between the two coats, the armhole on the Ready-To-Wear coat is a full three centimeters deeper. In the magic world of bespoke clothing, that is a long way!
Why is the armhole so important? Well, first of all, there is the matter of the depth of the arnhole. A lower armhole means that the undersleeve, the part under your arm, is attached to the body of the coat at a lower position. Much lower than where your arm actually connects to your torso. This results in ungainly symptoms when wearing the coat, as well as discomfort. When you raise your arms a little, the shoulders of your coat will go up, the side of the coat will flare out to the sides, and the whole coat will almost seems to be hanging from your biceps.
Here you see the striped coat on a dummy.The red thread on the dummy is roughly where the arm of a person is attached to the torso. It will follow that the smaller the hole, the more acurately it has to be placed to be at the exact location on the body. If not, it will feel terribly uncomfortable, and will look horrid. The kind of feeling you’d get if you’d put on a bespoke coat of another person. This aspect of the scye is due to the stance and the build of the body, which differs with each person.
This photo shows the same coat on the same dummy, but you will notice that the red thread seems to be ‘off-centre’
This shows very nicely what the art of bespoke is all about. In the previous picture, the coat is placed on the dummy in such a way that it shows, roughly, where the armhole is supposed to be placed around the arm-torso point. In this photo here, however, I have adjusted the coat so that it ‘fits’ the dummy better. And immediately, one can see that the stance of this particular customer is different from standard. Nice thought: I’ll ship a bottle of Stormhoek to the first reader who can tell me what the stance of this customer must be like. If you’re in the trade, you’re exempt form participation 
.
There is absolutely no point in simply cutting a tiny armhole, if you don’t know where to position it. And that is, in my opinion, exactly why the Ready-To-Wear industry cuts larger armholes. If they’re bigger, there are less problems to position them for a variety of physical builds, so you will sell more suits. Like I said before: efficiency equals compromise.
By the way, here is the Ready-To-Wear coat armhole on the dummy. ‘Nuf said.
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Is there an answer to the question yet? (I’ve just found your blog and am very interested in tailoring lately.) Does he have a concave chest and overly rounded back?
It would seem to me that the customer stands stoop-shouldered. His chest wouldn’t have to be concave per se, but if he (for instance) is an overly tall fellow who is habitually tending to those substantially shorter than he, his shoulders would pitch forward and down, rounding his back over.