Two strips of cloth do more to set a jacket's mood than almost anything else on it, and most men could not tell you which two they own. In this video, Leah and fashion consultant Chris Modoo break down the difference between a peak lapel and a notch lapel, what each one signals, and which jackets they belong on. Below, we go further into the detail the video does not have time for.

Enter our prize draw to win a tie and pocket square of your choice plus a personal consultation with Chris Modoo

Shop the Video

---

The Basic Anatomy

What Is the Difference Between a Peak Lapel and a Notch Lapel?

A notch lapel is the one you already own, even if you have never had cause to name it. It is formed where the lapel meets the collar at an angle, leaving a small triangular gap, the notch itself, between the two pieces of cloth. It is unremarkable by design. The whole point of a notch lapel is that it does not announce itself, which is precisely why it has become the default setting for almost every single-breasted jacket made anywhere in the world, from a sports jacket to a business suit.

A peak lapel does the opposite. Instead of meeting the collar at a modest angle, the lapel continues upward into a point that gestures toward the shoulder, as though the jacket were reaching for something just out of frame. The effect is broader across the chest, more architectural, and considerably harder to ignore. Traditionally the peak lapel belongs to double-breasted jackets, where the overlapping fronts need a stronger shape to balance them, though as Chris points out in the video, it is entirely at home on a single-breasted jacket too, provided you understand what you are signing up for.

There is a third lapel, the shawl, which has neither notch nor peak and simply curves in one continuous line from collar to button. It belongs almost exclusively to dinner jackets and deserves its own conversation another day. For now, the choice that actually governs most of a working wardrobe sits between the two we have already named.

---

The Everyday Workhorse

Why the Notch Lapel Is the Default for Almost Every Jacket

Ask why the notch lapel won, and the honest answer is that it never had to fight particularly hard. A moderate notch lapel, neither too narrow nor too wide for the jacket carrying it, works on a sports jacket in a hopsack weave, on a business suit cut for a Monday morning, and on most things in between. It is the lapel equivalent of a good white shirt: rarely the most interesting thing in the room, never the wrong choice.

The detail worth knowing, because it separates people who have thought about this from people who have not, is that the top of the notch should sit roughly level with the knot of your tie. Get this proportion right and the eye reads the jacket as balanced before it has consciously registered why. Get it wrong, with a notch sitting unusually high or low, and something will feel slightly off even to someone who could not begin to explain the cause.

Width matters more than people assume, too. A notch lapel cut too narrow can make a jacket look mean and undernourished, the sartorial equivalent of a meeting that ended five minutes too early. Cut too wide, and it tips into a different decade entirely, generally one with wider trousers and stronger opinions about disco. The moderate width used across our jacket collection sits deliberately between those two extremes: contemporary without chasing a trend that will need replacing in three years.

This is why a notch lapel, in a hopsack or a herringbone, in a navy check or in plain dark brown, remains the jacket most men should own first. It moves between a client meeting and a Saturday lunch without complaint, and it will still look correct a decade from now, which is more than can be said for most things you will buy this year.

---

Borrowed Formality

Can a Peak Lapel Work on a Single-Breasted Jacket?

Yes, and the result is more interesting than most single-breasted jackets manage. A peak lapel on a single-breasted cut borrows the formality of a double-breasted jacket without the additional cloth across the front, which means you get the visual drama without the extra structure underneath. Chris's point in the video undersells quite how good the combination can look when the rest of the jacket is built to support it.

The trick, and it is a real one, is balance elsewhere. A single-breasted jacket with a wide peak lapel needs something to stop the lapel becoming the only feature anyone notices. A single button closure helps, because it keeps the front of the jacket clean and gives the lapel room to do its work uninterrupted. Jetted pockets, the flush, no-flap kind used on most evening jackets, do the same job at the hip, keeping the whole lower half of the jacket quiet so the eye stays where you want it.

Our Pink Superfine Merino Wool Jacket is the clearest example we make of this principle in practice: a single-breasted cut, a proper peak lapel, and mother-of-pearl buttons that read as considered rather than decorative. It is not a conventional jacket, in colour or in lapel, and it does not pretend otherwise. Worn with a plain shirt and the right trouser it reads as a deliberate evening interpretation rather than a jacket that has wandered in from the wrong department.

---

The Natural Pair

Why Double-Breasted Jackets Are Almost Always Cut With a Peak Lapel

There is a reason you will struggle to find a double-breasted jacket with a notch lapel, and it is not fashion, it is geometry. A double-breasted front overlaps by design, which means there is considerably more fabric across the chest than a single-breasted jacket carries. A modest notch lapel, asked to balance that amount of cloth, simply loses the argument. The lapel disappears into the jacket rather than framing it.

A peak lapel solves the problem by matching the front's ambition. The upward point gives the eye somewhere definite to land and creates a strong diagonal line that runs from the shoulder down through the crossover of buttons, which is precisely the visual structure a double-breasted jacket needs to look intentional rather than simply buttoned twice. This is also why a double-breasted jacket reads as more formal than its single-breasted equivalent before anyone has said a word: the lapel and the overlap are working together to communicate occasion.

Cloth plays its part too. A peak lapel, because it is already doing visual work, tends to suit a smoother, less textured cloth, since a heavily textured fabric competing with a dramatic lapel shape can look busy rather than considered. A notch lapel is more forgiving here, taking happily to a textured hopsack, a flannel, or a tweed, because the lapel itself is not asking for attention and the cloth is free to provide some instead.

Our Beige Double-Breasted Jacket demonstrates the pairing well, cut with the four kissing buttons and ticket pocket that double-breasted tailoring tends to collect along the way. Worn with a tie in a similar register, something like our Navy Medallion Silk Tie, the whole look stops being a costume choice and starts being simply a well-dressed alternative to the single-breasted jacket sitting in most wardrobes by default.

---

Evening Territory

How to Wear a Peak Lapel Dinner Jacket or Cocktail Jacket

Black tie is where the peak lapel finds its most confident home, and the cocktail jacket Chris references in the video, the one with the noticeably wide peak lapel, is a useful case study in why proportion management matters more than the individual details. A wide peak lapel on its own can overwhelm a jacket. Balanced by a single button front and jetted pockets, as he describes, it becomes the entire point of the garment rather than a feature fighting everything around it.

Our Black Dinner Jacket - Peak Lapel and its navy equivalent both follow this logic precisely: peak lapels, piped pockets, and a single button fastening, the three details working as a set rather than as separate decisions. Pair either with a Marcella-front dress shirt and a proper silk bow tie rather than a pre-tied substitute, since a bow tie sitting slightly imperfect at the end of the evening reads as more convincing than one that started suspiciously straight and stayed that way.

The trousers matter more than people expect, too. A satin stripe down the outer seam, in a width that echoes the lapel rather than competing with it, finishes the silhouette properly. Patent shoes or a good velvet slipper complete it. None of this is complicated, but all of it depends on the same principle behind the whole peak lapel argument: it works because every other decision has agreed to support it rather than compete with it.

Season has a say too, if a quieter one. Peak lapels turn up more often in winter formal wear, heavier cloths for dinner jackets and double-breasted suits built for indoor warmth across a long evening. Notch lapels carry the wardrobe through every season without complaint, in linen and cotton-linen blends for summer sports jackets through to flannel and tweed for the colder months, which is one further reason it remains the safer first purchase.

---

---

Dress It Up, Dress It Down

How to Style a Notch Lapel Sports Jacket or Blazer

If the peak lapel is the jacket making a statement, the notch lapel is the jacket doing the actual work, and most of that work happens in how you tie it together with what is underneath. The advice from the video, that the notch should sit level with your tie knot, is worth repeating because almost nobody checks it and almost everyone benefits once they do.

Beyond that one rule, a notch lapel sports jacket is remarkably forgiving of pattern and colour, more forgiving in fact than most people assume before they try it. A hopsack weave in dark brown takes a striped tie comfortably because the jacket's texture is doing enough of its own visual work that the tie does not need to compete for attention. A herringbone in light grey does the same with a quieter, more reserved tie, since the herringbone itself already carries some pattern, and a second loud pattern on top of it tends to argue rather than agree.

Our Dark-Brown Hopsack Wool Blend Jacket, worn here with our Claret & Steel Grey Stripe Silk Tie, is a fair demonstration of the principle: a notch lapel doing exactly what it is meant to do, which is stay out of the way while everything else in the outfit gets to be interesting. Add a pocket square in a complementary rather than matching tone and the whole thing moves from correct to genuinely well put together.

---

The Finishing Detail

Why the Pocket Square Still Matters on a Notch Lapel Jacket

A notch lapel jacket, precisely because it asks for so little attention on its own, rewards a pocket square more generously than a busier jacket ever could. There is space for it, both literally and visually, in a way a peak lapel jacket with a wide lapel and a bold tie sometimes does not have. The rule that has served readers of this Library well before now still applies: choose a colour already present somewhere else in the outfit, in the tie or the shirt, rather than reaching for something that introduces an entirely new colour to argue with everyone else.

Our Steel Blue & Green Madder Silk Pocket Square is built for exactly this kind of quiet coordination, pulling a tone already present in a striped tie or a checked jacket rather than competing with either. It is a small decision, the kind that takes perhaps four seconds longer than leaving the pocket empty, and it remains one of the more reliable ways to signal that the rest of the outfit was not an accident.

---

Bending the Rule

Can a Notch Lapel Work for Evening Occasions?

Strictly, no, not for black tie itself, where the dinner jacket's peak or shawl lapel is doing a specific job that a notch lapel was never built for. But strict black tie is not the only evening that exists, and a notch lapel jacket in a dark, textured cloth, navy or a deep check, handles a smart dinner or a less formal evening event perfectly well. The distinction worth holding onto is occasion rather than time of day. A formal City dinner or a wedding with black tie specified on the invitation calls for the genuine article. A Friday evening dinner with friends, or an event marked smart casual rather than formal, is comfortably within reach of a good notch lapel jacket worn with the right tie and a touch more polish than you would bring to the office.

Confusing the two is the more common mistake, not choosing the wrong lapel outright. Knowing which evening you are actually attending, rather than assuming the most formal version by default, is most of the battle.

---

Proportion Over Everything

Does Lapel Width Matter as Much as Lapel Shape?

Shape gets all the attention in this conversation, peak against notch, but width is doing nearly as much work and gets discussed far less often. A lapel cut too narrow, regardless of whether it ends in a notch or a peak, reads as mean rather than modern. Cut too wide, it drags the jacket toward a specific decade whether you intended a reference to it or not.

The moderate width used across both our notch and peak lapel jackets sits where most tailoring authorities currently agree the line should be: substantial enough to register as a deliberate choice, restrained enough to avoid dating quickly. If you are choosing between two jackets that are otherwise similar, lapel width is worth checking before lapel shape, since a poorly proportioned lapel will look wrong regardless of which type it is.

---

Quick Ways to Tell

How to Identify a Peak Lapel or Notch Lapel on Your Own Jackets

If you are standing in front of a wardrobe right now wondering what you actually own, the check takes about ten seconds per jacket. Look at where the lapel meets the collar. If you see a small triangular notch cut into the join, with the lapel falling away below it, you are looking at a notch lapel, and the odds are reasonable that most of your jackets fall into this category, since it is the standard fitted to almost every single-breasted jacket sold anywhere.

If instead the lapel continues upward past the collar line into a point that gestures toward your shoulder, you are looking at a peak lapel. Check your double-breasted jackets first, since the convention there is close to universal, then check any dinner jacket or cocktail jacket you own, since peak lapels are common there too. If you find a lapel with no notch and no point, a single continuous curve from collar to button instead, that is the shawl lapel, the third type, reserved almost entirely for dinner jackets and rarely seen elsewhere.

Knowing which lapel sits on which jacket is a genuinely useful piece of information to carry around, mostly because it tells you, at a glance and before you have even put the jacket on, roughly what kind of evening it was built for.

---

The Short Version

So, Peak or Notch? It Depends What You're Telling People

A notch lapel says you have somewhere sensible to be and you intend to look correct doing it, which covers the overwhelming majority of what most men wear most days. A peak lapel says something has occasion attached to it, whether that is a double-breasted jacket worn with intent or a dinner jacket on a night that calls for one. Neither lapel is better than the other in any meaningful sense. They are simply answering different questions, and the mistake worth avoiding is putting the wrong lapel's answer into the wrong day's question.

Buy the notch lapel jacket first, because you will wear it more. Add the peak lapel jacket, whether double-breasted or dressed for evening, once you have an occasion that actually deserves it. By then you will also have a sharper eye for why the distinction mattered in the first place, which is rather more than most jackets manage to teach you.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

Your Lapel Questions Answered

---

To explore peak and notch lapel jackets in person, click on the button below.