Lapel

The Fold That Frames the Chest

A tailored jacket is built around an opening. Below the throat, the front edges of the jacket fold back on themselves and lie flat against the chest, forming the two lapels and the triangular opening between them through which the shirt, tie or sweater shows. The fold is not decorative stitching added afterward: the lapel is the jacket's own front, turned back and shaped, continuous with the collar that wraps the neck above the point where collar and lapel meet — the gorge — and with the button stance below. How the lapel rolls from the top button to the gorge, neither breaking sharply nor lying dead flat, is one of the clearest signs of good tailoring, because the roll is created by the internal canvas structure and the cutter's shaping, not by pressing alone.

Lapel width is fashion's pendulum in miniature. Wide lapels dominated the 1930s and returned in the 1970s; narrow lapels ruled the early 1960s and the skinny-tailoring years of the 2000s; moderate widths fill the decades between. Because the lapel is so visible and so hard to alter — narrowing or widening one means recutting the jacket front — a lapel's width dates a photograph and a vintage garment almost as reliably as its silhouette. Tailors counsel proportion over fashion: the lapel should roughly relate to the width of the wearer's tie and the breadth of the chest, so the jacket keeps its balance when the pendulum swings.

Notch, Peak and Shawl

The notch lapel is the business standard. The collar and lapel meet at an angle, and the step where they join leaves a visible notch; it is the form on most single-breasted suits and blazers. The peak lapel turns its outer edge upward into a point that aims toward the shoulder, a more assertive and formal form required on double-breasted jackets and favored on dinner jackets and formal suits. The shawl collar removes the notch and the point altogether: collar and lapel become one continuous rounded roll of cloth curving from the neck to the button, the classic form on tuxedos and smoking jackets, often faced in satin that contrasts with the jacket body.

Details accumulate on the lapel because it sits at eye level. The boutonniere buttonhole in the left lapel, backed on fine jackets by a small loop on the underside to hold a flower stem, survives from an era when jackets buttoned to the neck and flowers were everyday formal wear. Lapel facings — the material on the visible folded surface — may match the jacket or contrast with it, as satin facings do on evening dress. In the dictionary sense the term is precise: the folded-back triangular fronts of a jacket below the throat. In the tailor's sense it is the jacket's face, the part of tailored clothing that fashion redraws most often while changing the construction least.