What you are paying for in a suit

The canvas is the jacket, and almost nobody mentions it

A jacket holds its shape because of a layer you never see. In a canvassed jacket, a sheet of woven horsehair or similar sits between the cloth and the lining and is stitched to the cloth, so the two move together and the canvas slowly takes the shape of the chest that wears it. In a fused jacket the stiffening is glued to the cloth instead. Fusing is faster, cheaper and perfectly serviceable, and it is why a £200 suit can look sharp in the shop. What it cannot do is mould to you, and the glue is the part that eventually fails.

Cad & The Dandy state theirs plainly: made by hand on a full floating canvas, with a hand-padded lapel. That is the clearest construction claim in our own suits listing. The other makers describe cloth, lining, buttons and cut, and name a house block, which tells you the shape of the jacket rather than what is holding it there.

So the practical advice is not to assume the worst about a suit that stays quiet. It is to ask. The question is: is this fused, half-canvassed or fully canvassed. A shop that knows will answer in four words, and the answer is worth more than any other single fact about a suit at this price.

• Cad & The Dandy build on a full floating canvas with a hand-padded lapel. Cad & The Dandy
• Hackett name a house block rather than a canvas, which describes the jacket's shape. Hackett
• Where construction is described off the peg it is usually the lining and the trim. Hackett

The drop is why off the peg never quite fits

An off-the-peg suit is sold as one size, and the trousers that come with it are a fixed distance from the jacket. Cad & The Dandy state the convention: the trouser is a six inch drop from the jacket size. A 40 inch chest therefore arrives with a 34 inch waist whether or not that is your waist.

Six inches is an average and most people are not average. If your drop is seven or eight you will spend the first week of ownership at an alterations counter, and if it is four or five there may be nothing to let out. This is the single most common reason a suit that looked right in the mirror never gets worn.

Two ways round it, both represented in our listing. Buy the halves separately: SirPlus sell theirs to be worn as separates or as a suit, so the jacket size and the trouser waist are chosen independently. Or buy made to measure, where the trousers arrive unfinished and are cut to your leg as part of the price rather than as an extra trip.

• The off-the-peg convention is a six inch drop from jacket size to trouser waist. Cad & The Dandy
• SirPlus sell the blazer and trousers to be worn as separates or as a suit. SirPlus
• Made to measure trousers arrive unfinished, to be cut to the leg. Cad & The Dandy

Cloth is a season, not a quality

A heavier cloth is not a better cloth, it is a colder one. Fresco is a high-twist open weave that lets air through and drops its creases, which is why it is the one worsted that is bearable in August. Tropical wool does the same job with a crisper handle. Flannel is soft, warm and forgiving, and miserable in July. Linen and wool-linen mixes are cooler still and crease as a condition of being linen rather than as a fault.

This matters more than it sounds because most people buy one suit and then wear it in every month of the year, which guarantees being uncomfortable in half of them. If you are buying a second suit, buying it in a different weight is a better use of the money than buying it in a different colour.

• Fresco is an open weave wool woven in England by Dugdale, sold for breathability. Hackett
• Tropical wool is light and crisp with enough give to wear in heat. Cad & The Dandy
• Flannel is soft-handled and mid-weight, sold for cooler weather. Cad & The Dandy

A dinner suit is the one place the cloth really is the decision

Black tie is worn a handful of times a year and kept for decades, which inverts the usual arithmetic: there is no wearing-out, only looking wrong. The traditional evening cloth is wool with mohair in it, because mohair holds a sharp edge and resists the shine that pure worsted develops under lights, and it gives black a faint lustre rather than a flat matt.

Hackett's dinner suit is specified at sixteen per cent mohair. Favourbrook's is all wool with grosgrain silk lapels, where the money is going into the silk and the finish instead. Both are correctly made; they are answering different questions, and the mohair one is answering the one about lights.

• The Hackett dinner suit is specified at sixteen per cent mohair. Hackett
• The Favourbrook dinner suit is all wool with grosgrain silk peak lapels. Favourbrook

What this adds up to

At the bottom of this range you are buying cloth and finish, made competently, in a fixed drop. At the top you are buying a canvas, a lapel somebody padded by hand, and a trouser cut to your leg. The jump is not large in money and it is large in how long the thing stays yours.

If you only take one thing from this: ask about the canvas, and know your drop before you walk in.

Suits we have judged for this

• Cad & The Dandy Single Breasted Notch Lapel Suit in Navy Flannel £1,200
• SirPlus Navy Wool Cashmere Suit £790
• Hackett Wool Fresco Double Breasted Suit £1,000
• Hackett Wool Mohair Dinner Suit £850