Tag Archives: armholes

What is Wednesday #15.

What is Wednesday.

WIW#15 - high armhole

This weekly Wednesday post is aimed at answering some of the more basic and critical aspects of tailoring and the terminology we use to describe them. It stems from realizing that I’m constantly throwing out different terms with my clients and quite often they’re unsure as to what I exactly mean.  The goal of this section then is to alleviate this terminology gap and provide you with some know-how to talk tailoring with a little more ease.

What is…the reason for having high armholes?

The issue of high armholes is perhaps one of the more miss-understood elements of jackets; let it be said once and for all that higher is simply better.  The reasons are the following; it allows you to have a far greater ease of movement, it’s more comfortable and it looks way better as it allows for a trimmer fit in the chest.    The example below shows this quite beautifully:

WIW#15 - high armhole (1)

Ease Of Movement.

Notice how the fellow in the image above has his arm extended to shoulder level.  As you can see there is essentially no lifting, twisting or movement at all in the jacket as a result of this movement.  This is because the sleeve is able to act independently from the body of the jacket due to the higher cut armhole.  Eventually the jacket will start to rise but only as the arm gets above the shoulder level; in the event the armhole was cut lower then the body would be pulled upwards as the arm hits the chest level.

Comfort.

This is primarily due to the fact that the jacket isn’t moving around with each arm or body movement.  This point shouldn’t be underestimated – constant movement of the jacket means constant fidgeting to get things back in place which never looks or feels good.

Cleaner Appearance.

The higher armhole enables the chest to be kept trimmer and cut closer to the body; this takes away a lot of the puddling that we often see right below the armhole which adds unnecessary visual bulk.  Another factor is a longer silhouette from the bottom of the armhole to the bottom of the jacket; this elongates the body and is a big aspect of making a body look longer and leaner which is fairly often a goal of most clients.

As always please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or comments. Better yet book a free appointment and we can banter in person and see if we might be a good fit to work together.

Take care – Michael

info@martinfishertailors.com