The Vanishing Experts

What, exactly, is meant by the phrase, “European Cut” or “Italian cut?” It is something you’ll hear in a department or discount store, but what does it mean?

Here’s how it would go. Trying on a suit jacket on which the button remains an inch or so distant from the buttonhole, despite your efforts to fasten it, you might say, “This seems kind of tight.” The salesman, stifling a yawn, says, “Yes. That’s by Asparagi. It’s a European cut.” The next jacket might be double breasted, for the amount of room it offers, but you can only find one breast. You say, “This seems kind of loose.” The salesman, looking up from his phone again, says, “Yes. That’s by Spermacetti. He has an Italian cut.

“Oh,” you say. “I see.” And leave.

I admit I am being snide and judgmental, making fun of the harmless, hardworking salesman, yeoman of our trade, on whom the industry’s success or failure depends. I am. But I don’t find fault with the individual; it is the economic system, the pace and complexity of retailing that prevents the average trainee from really learning anything about clothing, about textiles and the nuances of the products they sell. In fact, the people I have come to admire the most in our business have been retail salespeople.

The best I ever knew was Jim Hagan. He worked at Britches of Georgetown in their Connecticut Avenue store and he knew more about the business and about his clients, about human nature and about good old customer service than anyone I’ve ever known. There have been books written attempting to teach these things, but it seems that the real salespeople know this stuff instinctively. Anything he didn’t know Jimmy made it his business to find out. He would call me at home at night to ask about fabric, or fit, or what mill it was that made the fabric for that jacket he’d sold that day. He sold Norman Hilton suits to Al Gore when Gore was Senator and then Vice President, but he’d never tell you that, never brag on all the politicos and mucky-mucks he dressed. He just did what he did, and he elevated it from a job to a profession. I think about him just about every day. Jimmy died a few years back leaving his wife Fran and their two sons. He fought cancer with a brave and loving heart and he died a hero. Beautiful, big St. Albans Church in Washington, where they had his funeral, was filled to overflowing with friends. The eulogies were many, moving and sincere. Jimmy Hagan was just a clothing salesman like Mohandas Gandhi was just a politician.

There have been others, too. Tom Heritage with Connolly’s in Oklahoma City. Arthur Jordan of Louis, Boston. Patrick McCarthy at Nordstrom’s in Seattle; Ron Quan at Brittany Ltd., and then Paul Stuart in Chicago; Dalton Bostic of Barneys, New York; David Bernstein at Bergdorf Goodman Men. All of them are intelligent, thoughtful, well-trained professionals; and rare as hens’ teeth. Not a man among them would ever say “European cut” and expect you to take them seriously. They knew too much, had too much respect for the customer, to use these meaningless catch-phrases. They sell with pride and authority because they are well-educated in the field.

What makes European clothing fit differently is the fact that the measuring system used to make it is based on centimeters rather than on inches. They size a suit jacket by a formula which is complicated but somewhat logical: they measure the chest of the intended wearer and divide by two. Thus, a size 50 suit is meant to fit a man with a chest 100 cms. in circumference. This comes to roughly 39.4 inches. If a salesman puts an Italian-made size 50 on you and you normally wear a 40, the garment is probably too small. A 52 is close to our 41. The next size, a 54, fits like our non-existent 42.5. It’s not that that they don’t fit. It’s that they fit differently, that’s all. That’s the only thing really “European” about them.

            That’s the jacket. The pants are even more complicated. The trouser that is marked a size 50 is the one they would make to go with their jacket of that size. So a 50 trouser is meant to fit with a 50 jacket, based on the “drop.” Here is where it gets complicated. The drop can be anything the manufacturer decides. A “Size 50, Drop 8” comes with a trouser 16 centimeters smaller than 100, making the waist about 33. Drop 6? Subtract 12 and halve it:  34.6 inches. So, a 54 drop 6 comes with a size 37 ¾” pant.

I know: Way too complicated. And for this reason among others you must find a sophisticated, knowledgeable and sincerely caring retail salesperson to take care of you. It is like the man said: “I don’t want to know the law. I just want to know I have a good lawyer.” It is the same with the good clothier. You don’t want to have to bring a calculator with you to buy a suit. You just want to get the right size.

FYI     So where did the phrase “European cut” come from, anyhow? The answer is, I have no idea. In the 50’s and 60’s, the age of La Dolce Vita the clothing from the Continent was made for the typical Italian or French man’s physique. They were smaller and thinner than us back then; (today they are much smaller and much thinner.) So the “cut” of their clothes was tighter on us. Maybe that’s what the department store salesmen are referring to. But in the 80’s the look coming from Europe was oversized, draped on the body. However I must say in my several hundred visits to Europe I have never seen anyone wearing clothes as big and oversized as I see here in the US. In a nutshell, the European designers have been affected by the same changes in fit mentality as we have here. There is no one era or mind-set that we could use as a standard to characterize a European mentality of “cut” or fit. Each designer and his or her pattern-maker have created, as we Americans have, an individual idea of silhouette or fit for their evolving collections.

English tailors of Savile Row, like Huntsman, Henry Poole and Gieves and Hawkes have made an hourglass shaped, narrow-waisted, side vented jacket that might be widely recognized enough to be called an “English cut,” but as far as I know there is no analogous European version because the Italians, the French, and the Germans have no such common look.