The Outcome of Sending My Suede Tailored Jacket for Alterations

Hello, this is Mr. Linen.

The alterations for the black suede tailored jacket I introduced in the previous article (in Japanese only) finally came back after about three months.

Here is my honest review.

1 The Finished Result
2 The One Thing That Bothered Me

The Finished Result

First, let’s look at the before-and-after photos.

Here are the specific areas that were altered:

Lowering the collar height

Before: the collar sat too high and even covered the shirt collar.

Reducing the neck circumference

Example from another jacket: when the neck opening is too large, a gap appears behind the neck.

Taking in the body width

Slimming the sleeves

Shortening the sleeve (only left one)

Converting from a “3-button, 2-to-button” to a “3-roll-2”

A “3-button, 2-to-button” jacket means you fasten the top two buttons.

A “3-roll-2” jacket means you fasten only the middle button.

The total cost came to around 130 000 JPY — around 800-900 USD.

It is a quite big expense, but I really wanted to wear this jacket, and even with this cost, it was still cheaper than commissioning a custom-made suede jacket.

In the end, the tailor delivered a perfect result, and I’m very satisfied.

The One Thing That Bothered Me

There was just one detail that didn’t turn out perfectly.

It’s related to the conversion from 3-button, 2-to-button to 3-roll-2.

The specific alteration involved opening the lapel seam, removing the original canvas, and replacing it with a canvas shaped for a proper 3-roll-2 roll line.

On the left chest (the side with the breast pocket), the lapel rolls beautifully. But on the right side, the old crease from the previous button stance remains. Because leather tries to return to its original fold, the lapel doesn’t lie down as cleanly.

This is not a matter of skill. Leather can’t be pressed with an iron, and once a crease is set, it’s extremely difficult to remove.

The tailor had even warned me beforehand that the old crease might not disappear completely.

So I have absolutely no complaints about their workmanship.

Let me explain why I still felt a bit conflicted.

Before sending it in, I had tried reshaping the lapel myself by pressing the leather down and shifting the roll point. When I did this, the left lapel shaped nicely, but the right side simply wouldn’t take the new roll.

Here’s the picture from when I did it myself.

Because of this, I concluded that the right side needed professional work, so I opted for the canvas replacement — which only comes as a set for both sides.

But the final result didn’t look much different from what I achieved on my own.

Since the alteration cost 27 500 JPY, I couldn’t help but feel, “If the finish wasn’t going to be perfect anyway, maybe doing it myself was enough.”

Again, the tailor had clearly warned me that the crease might not disappear, so this is entirely a matter of my own misunderstanding of leather’s limitations.

Thank you for reading.