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StyleOctober 2018
7 Shoulder Styles and How to Wear Them
Since the 1600s, the cut of a shoulder has aimed to exaggerate or suppress the apparent width, and hence presence, of the man beneath it. Here, we look at a few key styles of shoulder and how each works best.
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The Shirt Shoulder or Spalla Camicia
The elegant ‘spalla’ or ‘manica camicia’ shoulder, as its names suggests, has Italian and, more specifically, Neapolitan origins. Roughly translated, this means to make the shoulder of the suit jacket in a way not dissimilar to that of a shirt - using a series of tiny pleats, known in the trade as ‘shirring’, at the point of connection between shoulder and sleeve. The result is a shoulder that falls naturally along the line of the body. To the untrained eye the shoulder - despite the craftsmanship required - can look informal. Its fans, however, speak to the fact that, despite normally being found on a closer fitting jacket, it - together typically with a draped chest - gives an unparalleled ease of movement, despite the comparatively narrow arm hole. Grey houndstooth double-breasted jacket, £1,180, Rubinacci, www.therake.com.
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The Strong Roped Shoulder
Unless you’ve been hitting the gym hard, most likely your shoulder line will have a natural concave to it, dipping in at the end of the clavicle before rising again at the muscles that surround the top of the humerus. Biology lesson over, it’s this natural line - rather than that of the soft shoulder tailoring that curves down at the end to follow the shoulder into the arm - that has been most notably celebrated by Tommy Nutter/Edward Sexton. Not to be confused with a pagoda shoulder, which is more concave, it’s nevertheless a distinctive shoulder variety, not least because tailors often add a roped sleeve head to exaggerate the effect, as Edward Sexton does with his one-button sports jackets. It’s also one of the trickier shoulders to pull off, requiring the use of a touch of padding at the top of the sleeve head or, done well, just lots of painstaking manipulation of the canvas. Cream, red and navy Prince of Wales check jacket, £1,900, Edward Sexton, www.therake.com.
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The Raglan Sleeve
More commonly found on overcoats rather than jackets - though more avant-garde designer-tailors have experimented with it to create super-unstructured styles akin to cardigans - the Raglan sleeve extends beyond the point where it would more typically join the shoulder, to form the shoulder itself too. In other words, the sleeve head runs in one piece from collar to underarm, resulting in a fluid line unbroken by the more usual defined step at the shoulder. The result is said to allow you complete freedom to swing your sword around, or at least that was the idea when Lord Raglan invented it in collaboration with his tailor after losing an arm in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. He is said to have demanded the arm back so he could retrieve his wedding ring… Black Windsor trench coat, £775, Grenfell, www.therake.com.
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