Why You Want a Long Lapel Line

I favor a tailored jacket most of the time for one overarching reason: it makes me look better. There are lots of cultural connotations with someone in a suit or blazer, of course, but it’s mostly personal for me. I like to wear something that’s flattering on me.

However, not every suit jacket or blazer is designed the same. There are several details that make an impact on the overall vibe a jacket gives off. One of those is the length of the lapel line.

I’m here to tell you: you want a long lapel line. It’s more flattering. It’s slimming. It’s forgiving on jackets that may not fit perfectly otherwise. It accentuates the narrowness of the waist and the relative width of the shoulder. It creates a larger triangular opening for your shirt and tie, which usually are brighter than the jacket, creating contrast and emphasizing that triangle. It makes you look taller. Look at these two photos, and focus on the impact the line of the lapel visually makes.

The lapel line is created by the combination of two things. First, it’s the buttoning point of the jacket, which is the one closest to your natural waist line. Second, it’s the roll of the lapel. The way a jacket is designed and cut in these two places creates the lapel line.

The simplest and most common configuration of these two would be a two-button jacket, with the buttoning point at your natural waist (i.e. no higher than an inch above your navel). There are three-button jackets that look like two-buttons (a 3-roll-2, they call it, which is how Neapolitan jackets are cut, like the second navy suit pictured above) because the lapel is made to roll to the middle button. If that middle button is close to the navel, you get the same effect.

Raise that button, however, and that lapel line shortens. Usually that happens in combination with an overall jacket length that gets shorter, too. That is unflattering for a whole host of other reasons. But even if it doesn’t, the impact is the same: a shorter lapel line reduces those flattering aspects I mentioned above, which are a visual lengthening of your torso and that reinforcing triangle shape.

Some three-button jackets are cut so the lapel rolls higher than at the middle button. There’s the hard-three, where the lapel rolls at the top button, which is a regional style most associated with Northern Italy, though it enjoyed widespread popularity in the 90s. Everyone knows the very basic rule “sometimes, always, never,” which dictates which button you should button on your jacket on three-button jackets made like this. These have the shortest lapel line of all. And it’s a personal preference, but I do not like them at all because they are less flattering.

And then there’s the middle-road “3-roll-2.5,” which is a phrase I’m pretty sure was invented on the internet and has never been uttered a tailor in all of history. But it’s a 3-button jacket where the lapel rolls to somewhere in the middle of the top and middle button. Usually what people like about this is that the lapel roll is very dramatic and three-dimensional. That holds appeal, though that appeal stems more from the platonic concept of the jacket itself and less how it flatters a human being (not that it will by default make someone look bad).

A long lapel line is best when the length of the jacket—the “skirt,” it’s actually called—is proportionally longer as well. For the past 15 years or so, the norm has become shorter jackets. Most companies raised the buttoning point to keep the proportionality of the length of the lapel with the length of the skirt below.

However, some designers knew that the lapel line is more flattering when longer, so they shortened the skirt but maintained a buttoning point more or less at the natural waist. The J.Crew Ludlow suit is a good example of this. It looks disproportionate when comparing above and below the buttoning point, which creates other visual problems, but the long lapel line does its job of looking flattering.

Of course, the best is to find a jacket where the overall length is right for you, the buttoning point is at your natural waist, the lapel line is long and it’s proportional to the skirt length. I found the No Man Walks Alone x Sartoria Carrara line to strike the perfect balance in all these regards.

When you’re shopping for a blazer or suit, keep this detail in mind. As you train your eye, and find brands that accommodate your own body, you can reap the benefits of a long lapel line in your own wardrobe.

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