You wear a suit next to you; it's literally like a second skin. You are in it all day, typically. It really matters how it fits, how it feels, how it looks. You may not know horse hair from camel hair, but your body will.

A suit is three dimensional. Compare it to a shirt, for example. Lay a shirt out on a flat surface, like a bed, and smooth it out. Notice how it can be made perfectly flat, except for the collar. A shirt is just flat fabric, with no structure. When you wear it, you fill it up, but it has no memory, and upon laundering returns to being flat.

A quality suit, on the other hand, is shaped as it's made, and it's shaped as you wear it. The three dimensional structure is created by how it's pressed, and by how it's sewn, and by the materials within it. Of these materials, the most important is the canvas. That's the inner layer of the suit, the chassis, if you will. Like the chassis of a car, it gives shape, structure, and strength. While you can't see it, this all-important part not only shapes the suit from the start, but also has a memory for your shape. Your heat and moisture interact with the canvas and continue to shape it as you wear it. And, this remains after you take the suit off.

Full Canvas
100% Camel Hair

Thus, a quality suit learns from you, and becomes your suit, shaped to fit you. This property of a suit, this ability to learn how to fit you, plus a great three-dimensional shape at the beginning, is what puts the word "quality" into a Jhane Barnes suit.

But, don't all suits have a canvas? No! And even if it does, not all canvasses are high quality. Here is the low-down on how suit quality can be compromised:

First, a suit can be "fused", meaning glue is applied to the fabric to stiffen it, giving a simulation of a canvas. The glue is hydrophobic, that is, it repels water (if it didn't, on a humid day it would melt!). Thus, there's a solid layer of moisture barrier inside the suit. On a warm day, guess where the moisture from your body goes? Well, it doesn't go anywhere, because it can't. It sits on your skin. You literally stick to your suit. Such "fused" construction is quick and thus inexpensive, but wearing a fused suit isn't comfortable. The suit doesn't move properly. When you move and stretch, the suit looks awkward.

Second, a suit can have a "half canvas", where the canvas is only in the upper part. The lower part of the suit is fused. This sounds better than fully fused, but the suit is now in two dissimilar parts. Imagine the front half of a Mercedes welded to the back half of a Yugo. Such a suit doesn't move properly. The primary advantage of a half canvas suit is that it can be advertised as having "canvas construction".

Third, the canvas can be a combination of fibers. For example, horse hair (which takes and holds a shape, but is stiff) can be mixed with cotton (soft, can't be shaped, and has no memory). This makes a suit cheap, and it makes a cheap suit. Camel hair is better than horsehair, because it's softly comfortable, but is much more expensive, so it too is usually blended with other fibers to hold down the cost, thus compromising shaping and memory. Also, over time, the differential expansion and contraction of the various fiber types causes the canvas to pucker.

So, knowing about the importance of the canvas, consider this: My suits have a full canvas that is 100% camel hair. It is sewn, not fused.

You cannot get a better canvas. Period. And the more you wear my suits, the more you will notice the difference this makes. And yes, it makes the suit expensive.

But I do not stop there. The same camel hair canvas goes into the collar. Most suits save money by using linen in the collar, but linen is stiff. The same softness and shape retention that make camel's hair luxurious and effective in the body canvas also applies to the collar.

While the canvas determines the "big picture" for a suit, defining the overall shape, much of the pleasure in wearing a suit comes from the details,

Note the clean lines and stitching in the shoulder (see image at left).

The waistband has a split back band with a v-notch (see image at right). This makes for the most flexible and comfortable fit of the pants, and permits them to more easily move with you.

Check out my pen pocket (image at left) detailing.

For the collar (see image below right) I add extra fabric to create a Neapolitan collar.

And these are simply the main highlights of the details of my suits. There are a dozen such small details, in stitching, fabric, and construction, that set these suits apart.

I like a suit that looks good on a man, is comfortable to wear for all day, is convenient, and has all those little special touches that he will come to appreciate the more he wears the suit.

Have questions? Want to know where to look for my suits? Please send me email.