Lapel Fold

Posted by: Martin Stall on 21/07/2007

How to shorten the foldline of a lapel&why.

I thought it would be nice to explain something about a dinner jacket I am making for a client in Belgium. I know, my business model changed and I’m not intending to travel so much anymore now that I live in Spain, but it is a very kind gentleman who placed the order, and it’s hard for me to say no. So a dinner jacket for mr C. it is. Anyway it is good to go to Belgium and Holland from time to time. For one, my dear mother lives there, and besides, I still have business going on there from time to time. So on with the story:

What you see here, is the front part of the dinner jacket. The canvass has been padded and basted under the front of the cloth. The pink vertical line on the right indicates where the lapel will fold (in the top, near the collar it folds, and rolls as it moves down, to the right.)

Here I am pointing at the beginning and end of the fold, from the gorge, left, to the button point, right.

What we want to achieve with a canvass chestpiece such as I use, is to create a beautiful chest, with just the right amount of fullness. For that purpose, we take out darts (wedges) in some places, and shape the canvass with steam. Another trick is to ease in certain parts of the cloth, such as the lapel fold. For this, I use a piece of linen stay-tape. On the right, you see two pink lines. One is to mark where the tape ends up when it is simply placed along the fold. The second one, to the left of the first, is where I want the tape to end up. See next pic.

Here, I have pulled the stay-tape down, to the right, while holding it steady on the left. So basically the tape will end up being too short. Note how it is now the second pink line which matches the button point of the canvass.

Basting the stay tape in place, while carefully distributing the excess length in the canvass under the tape.

After basting, you can now clearly see that some extra length was created by pulling the tape. Note how the canvass shows ‘waves’ on both sides of the tape.