Fourteen questions this time, from grooms wondering about bow ties to the case for a three-button suit in 2026. Chris Modoo works through wedding tailoring, travel cloth, Nehru jackets, city tailors, pattern mixing and the eternal argument over that spare bottom button. Watch the video, then read on for the detail there wasn't time to cover.

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Dressing for the Day

Can You Wear a Notch Lapel Suit With a Bow Tie as a Groom?

Yes, and there is nothing incorrect about it. A regular notch lapel suit and a bow tie is a perfectly legitimate combination for a groom, provided you know what you are actually trying to achieve. The question worth asking is whether you want the outfit to read as a lounge suit worn well, or whether you are quietly hoping it will pass for a dinner suit. Aim for the second and the compromise usually shows.

Keep the bow tie honest to the suit rather than borrowing from evening wear. A spotted or paisley bow tie works better than a plain black silk bow tie, which will always look like it wandered in from the wrong dress code. If your suit leans vintage, a bow tie in an antique-feeling fabric carries the idea through rather than fighting it. The rule, if there is one, is to let the bow tie admit what kind of suit it is sitting on top of.

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Black Tie, Without the Dinner Jacket

Is a Black Shadow Stripe Suit Right for a Wedding?

A black suit with a thin shadow stripe, the kind of herringbone you would expect on a morning coat, reads as properly formal without tipping into full evening dress. It carries enough weight for a wedding while staying clearly a suit rather than a dinner jacket in disguise.

Pale shirts are the safest choice underneath, with silver or pastel ties following the same restrained logic as the stripe itself. Groomsmen have two sensible routes: put them in the same cloth with a slightly different accessory treatment, or keep them in a plain black suit so the groom's stripe reads as a deliberate point of difference rather than an accident of tailoring.

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Formal Dressing

Should You Button a Three-Piece Suit Jacket?

There is no rule against it, but a three-piece suit does not need the jacket buttoned to look finished the way a two-piece often does. The waistcoat is doing the work a buttoned jacket would otherwise do: it closes the silhouette, so the jacket is free to hang open.

As a general habit, a two-piece suit or a double-breasted jacket looks better fastened. A waistcoat changes that calculation, and leaving the jacket open shows off the waistcoat, which is rather the point of wearing one. Button it if you prefer the look for photographs or a speech, and know that either choice is correct.

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Fabric Focus

What Is Travel Cloth and Which Fabrics Should You Choose?

Travel cloth covers a whole category of fabrics rather than one specific cloth: any wool woven for tailoring that resists creasing and holds its shape through a long day. Most are high-twist wools with at least a two-ply warp and weft, often described as tropicals, which is why they perform well in heat as much as on a plane.

Photo: sprezza boutique

The category splits roughly into two camps. Modern Italian travel cloths often carry finishing treatments beyond the weave itself: an antibacterial coating that keeps the cloth fresh through a warm flight, and a stain-resistant finish that makes a spilled coffee bead off rather than sink in. Traditional British travel cloths tend to be heavier and simpler in construction. The best known is fresco, a tightly woven tropical worsted from West Yorkshire, now used almost generically for any tropical travel cloth in the same way that tonic has become shorthand for any two-tone cloth rather than one specific version.

Photo: Dormeuil

Beyond fresco, look for spring ram cloths from the Scottish woollen merchants, or chunkier bunches from the West Country, both more old-fashioned in character than the Italian tropicals. Whichever camp you choose, the test is the same: a proper travel cloth should crease under a long flight and drop back into shape with nothing more than a hanger and a little steam.

Photo: Harrisons, est. 1863

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Statement Ties

How to Style a Yellow Paisley Tie

A yellow paisley tie is one of those pieces that looks intimidating on the rail and works harder than expected once it is actually on. For business, pair it with a charcoal flannel suit and a pale blue shirt, which gives the yellow somewhere calm to sit. For smart-casual dressing, a navy double-breasted blazer with gold buttons is the better setting: the yellow lifts noticeably against navy in a way it never quite manages against grey.

If you are choosing between formats, a two-button single-breasted jacket will get more use out of a tie like this than a Nehru jacket ever will, simply because it moves between more contexts. Our men's ties collection runs through several paisleys in a similar register if yellow is the direction you want to take a wardrobe.

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Jacket Versatility

Nehru Jacket vs Two-Button Single-Breasted: Which Is More Versatile?

The two-button single-breasted jacket wins this comparison and it is not close. Worn with flannels, a shirt and a tie it reads nearly as formal as a suit. Worn with chinos or jeans and an open collar it drops into something entirely casual. Very little else in a wardrobe covers that much ground on its own.

A Nehru jacket asks more of you. It has real presence, particularly in velvet as a smoking jacket alternative for black tie, or in linen for something more relaxed, but the short stand collar is difficult to dress well. A standard turn-down shirt collar rarely sits right underneath it, so you either need a jacket where the collar folds back into something resembling a lapel, or a shirt with a collar built to match. Buy a Nehru jacket once the basics are covered, not before.

The jacket doing most of that versatility argument in the video is our Dark-Grey Wool Flannel Jacket, shown here with our Burgundy & Blue Micro Dot Grenadine Tie. We go into the flannel itself in more depth in our guide to styling a grey flannel suit, including the trouser pairings and shoe choices that come with it. Add our Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai Pocket Square and the whole look moves from office to evening without changing a single piece.

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Tailoring History

What's the Difference Between a City Tailor and a Savile Row Tailor?

Savile Row sits in Mayfair, in Westminster, the newer half of London by medieval standards. The City of London is the older, original settlement, once entirely commercial and once full of men in suits who needed somewhere local to have them made. That gave rise to a separate culture of city tailors, distinct from the Row and largely gone today.

A city suit had to survive five days a week at a desk. A Savile Row suit only had to survive a dinner party.

A handful of names remain near the edges of the old City, Ede & Ravenscroft among them, though most of what is left leans toward made to measure rather than the fully handmade, single-customer tradition the Row is known for. Culturally, the differences ran deeper than geography. City tailoring tended to be more robust, built for a working week rather than an evening, with stiffer canvassing and heavier, less refined cloths than you would find on the Row. Some houses added small details purely for durability, a collar sewn onto the back of a waistcoat being one example. Linings on city suits also tended to run brighter than the quieter tones favoured in Mayfair, a small but telling difference in temperament between the two traditions.

Photo: Elisa Rolle, own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

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Garden Party Dressing

Can You Wear Tan Trousers With a Pink Jacket?

Yes, and it makes for a good garden party combination, as long as the tan stays pale and pastel rather than drifting into khaki or olive. A muddier tan will fight the pink rather than complement it, so keep the trouser shade light and let the jacket carry the colour.

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2026 Trends

Are Three-Button Suits Coming Back Into Fashion?

They are, and it is worth being precise about what that means. A proper three-button jacket is not the same as a three-roll-two, where the top button sits hidden under the lapel and only the middle two are meant to be used. This is the full three-button silhouette, buttoned across all three, and it is turning up again in a wardrobe that has spent a decade defaulting to two.

Interestingly, the men asking for it are often younger clients with no memory of the 1990s, when the three-button suit was simply what a suit looked like. Without that association weighing on the choice, it reads as fresh rather than dated, which is usually how a silhouette makes its way back into fashion.

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Mixing Patterns

How to Wear Patterned Trousers With a Plain Jacket

The standard rule for mixing separates is straightforward: if the trousers carry the pattern, keep the jacket plain. A navy blazer over houndstooth, Prince of Wales check, tartan or corduroy trousers works because pattern sits further from the face and reads as considered rather than busy. Tropical worsted shepherd's check trousers are a good example of how much personality you can bring in below the waist without it affecting the face at all.

Photo: Yorkshire Textiles

Also featured in this video: our Navy-Blue Check Wool-Linen Blend Jacket, worn here with our Navy Extra-Fine Merino Wool Polo Shirt and our Bonfire Celebrating Midsummer Night by Nikolai Astrup Pocket Square.

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Lapel Widths

Are Peak Lapels Wider Than Notch Lapels?

Generally, yes. If a client likes a three and a half inch lapel on a notch, the equivalent peak usually sits half an inch wider to look balanced against the extra structure a peak carries. Very wide lapels, up towards five inches, tend to suit a peak far better than a notch, particularly on a double-breasted jacket, while slim lapels are usually better served by a notch than by a narrow peak. We cover the full mechanics of both cuts, including where the gorge sits and which suits which build, in our guide to peak and notch lapels.

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Care & Maintenance

How to Keep a Pocket Square Neat Throughout the Day

Start with a good sized square in a quality silk and fold it properly. A poor fold loosens over the course of a day no matter how careful you are afterwards. Beyond that, the real secret is restraint. Constantly touching or adjusting a pocket square draws more attention to it than the square itself ever would, and reads as nervous rather than considered.

Set it once, forget about it, and only intervene if something practical disturbs it, a phone pulled from the same pocket being the usual culprit. A well-folded square in a decent silk should hold its shape through a full day without help.

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Jacket Etiquette

Why Don't You Button the Bottom Button on a Two-Button Jacket?

Most modern two-button jackets are cut so the front skirts away below the waist, which means the lowest button no longer sits directly over its buttonhole. Fasten it and the jacket pulls in at the hip rather than hanging properly, so the bottom button on a standard two-button jacket is decorative rather than functional.

If that bothers you, there are two honest ways round it. Buy or commission a one-button jacket and remove the argument entirely, or ask for a paddock coat, an older style of two-button jacket cut higher and straighter through the front specifically so both buttons can be fastened.

Photo: brownstailor

The same logic explains why nobody questions the spare button on an open-necked Oxford shirt. It sits there because the shirt looks more finished with it present, even though it is rarely used. The bottom button on a jacket works the same way: it completes the line of the garment rather than serving a practical purpose, and leaving it open is not a lapse in etiquette so much as the jacket working exactly as it was cut to.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Your Questions Answered

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