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What is the best way to get a shirt tailored? What do you recommend?

While there are a LOT of different ways and degrees to which you can get a shirt tailored, but there are four bigger (or at least, common) ways you can get a shirt tailored:

• You can get a shirt shortened. This mainly seems to happen to things like polo shirts and casual shirts. Dress shirts are usually intentionally long (to tuck better), so shortening them tends to be a bad idea, but some people still do it.
• You can get a shirt tapered. A simple taper is usually just slimming the shirt at the waist, usually from about the beginning of the side seams down. This is what most guys have to get tailored on virtually every shirt. Most shirts (for some strange reason) get wider/baggier as they go down, whereas most guys need them to taper in to a slimmer fit. This is generally the bread and butter of tailoring.
• You can get sleeves shortened. Most neck sizes are sold with corresponding sleeve lengths — for example, a Size 16 neck is usually associated with a 32/33 or 34/35 sleeve length. This doesn’t work for everyone, and as such, you can get the sleeves shortened.
• You can get the arms AND the body slimmed. In perhaps a more dramatic sense, you can get the arms slimmed and the body slimmed at the same time — basically slimming the shirt as much as possible. This has the (good, but possibly bad) effect of also making the chest slimmer. This is the most extensive (and usually most expensive) amount of tailoring, but it also can drastically transform a crappy shirt into a good one.

With that being said, a good tailor will be able to identify what you need done and will be able to assist you in measuring, pinning, and ultimately getting the work done to your satisfaction. Still, some general tips:

• When you go to a new tailor, bring in a cheaper, more destructible shirt to have them do the work on. Don’t risk your entire wardrobe initially.
• Check the tailor’s work. Check the inside sewing for any issues (loose threads, bad stitching, mismatched stitching, etc) and be willing to demand fixes if necessary. Sometimes, legitimate errors are made, but that doesn’t mean you do not hold them accountable.
• When a tailor pins your shirts, always have them pin each one, on both sides. Even if all of your shirts are the same brand/size/year, they will vary, and so will your individual sides. If your tailor doesn’t take the time to pin properly (and measure while doing so), find another tailor.
• Don’t feel bad about having a tailor do even relatively small work. Even a half inch on a shirt can make a lot of difference. Be picky.
• At the same time, don’t tailor a shirt TOO much. Seek a fitted shirt, but not a skin tight one. Skin tight dress shirts pull at the chest/stomach, making them unsightly and awkward looking. You should be able to move your arms freely and feel relaxed in a shirt, and it should always have the slightest bit of room in any part of your body (after all, you may gain muscle or fat).

Tags: Fashion, shirt, shirting, tailoring