Custom Blazers and Sport Coats Los Angeles

Most men in Los Angeles need a jacket more often than they need a suit. The meeting is in Culver City, the dinner is in Venice, the office has no dress code anyone will write down, and a full suit is half a step too much. A jacket with odd trousers is the answer, and it is the garment this city wears best.

Mr James is a European tailoring house at 221 Culver Blvd in Playa del Rey. Max, our French atelier, has made every garment by hand in Southern Brittany since the house was founded in 2010. A jacket on its own is cut exactly as a suit jacket is: fully bespoke, full canvas, from a pattern drafted for you alone, with unlimited fittings and a year of complimentary alterations included. Price follows the cloth and is settled at the consultation. We do not offer made-to-measure, which is the adjustment of an existing block rather than a pattern of your own, so there is no lesser version of this to weigh it against.

Blazer, sport coat, or just a jacket

The words are used loosely and it is worth being plain about them. A blazer, properly speaking, is a navy jacket of nautical descent, often with metal buttons, in a hopsack or a serge. A sport coat is a jacket in a textured or patterned cloth, usually with some country in its ancestry: tweed, flannel, a check, a herringbone. In practice most men mean the same thing by both words, which is a jacket that was never half of a suit. Our article on suit, blazer or sport coat sets out the distinction at length.

What matters more than the vocabulary is the first rule of the garment. A jacket made as half of a suit will almost always look like half of a suit when worn alone, because it was drawn to live under a dark worsted silhouette. A jacket drafted as a jacket is a different drawing from the beginning.

How a jacket is drawn differently from a suit jacket

Five things change. The shoulder goes softer, often with the padding reduced to almost nothing, because a jacket worn without a tie should look easy rather than official. The chest is cut a little cleaner and the waist a little less suppressed, since a jacket is often worn open. The length comes up a touch, because there is no matching trouser to continue the line and a shorter skirt reads as a jacket rather than as an orphan. The pockets change, typically to patch pockets, which soften the front and are the clearest signal that the garment was never a suit. And the cloth is chosen for texture rather than for smoothness, which is the real giveaway at ten paces.

We talk through all five at the consultation, with finished garments in the room. There is more on commissioning the garment on its own in can you have just a jacket made.

Cloth for a jacket in Los Angeles

This is where a jacket commission is genuinely more interesting than a suit commission, because a suit wants to be quiet and a jacket does not. The cloths that work here, in rough order of how often we cut them:

Hopsack, a loose basket weave in wool, usually navy. It is the single most useful jacket in a Los Angeles wardrobe. It breathes, it resists creasing almost unreasonably well, it travels, and it sits correctly with grey flannel, with cream cotton and with denim. If a client is having one jacket made, it is this one.

High-twist wool and fresco, open and dry to the hand, for the long warm half of the year. They hold a shape in heat better than anything else and they do not go limp by four in the afternoon.

Linen and linen blends, for genuinely hot weather and for anywhere near the water. Linen creases, which is the point of it, and a client who is not at peace with that should take a blend instead.

Tweed, flannel and cashmere blends for December through March, which do exist here, and for travelling east. A soft brown tweed is the most useful jacket a man owns after the navy hopsack.

Cotton and corduroy, which read younger and more relaxed, and which we cut with an even softer shoulder.

Every cloth we hold is available at the same standard of making, from the house cloths up through Drago, Zegna, Holland and Sherry and Loro Piana. The making never changes. Only the cloth does.

What to wear it with

A jacket is only useful if you have something to put below it, and this is where most wardrobes fall down. Grey flannel trousers first, in a mid grey, which will carry a navy jacket, a brown tweed and almost everything else. Then a pair in a stone or taupe cotton or a high-twist wool for the warm months. Those two pairs and two jackets will dress you for most of a year. We cut custom trousers on their own for exactly this reason, and our piece on odd trousers explains the arithmetic.

What not to wear it with is simpler: not the trousers of a suit in a similar but not identical shade, which is the most common mistake in this city and the most visible one.

Buttons, pockets and the small decisions

On a jacket the trimmings are allowed to be interesting in a way they are not on a dark business suit. Horn buttons on tweed and flannel, where the variation in the material is part of the pleasure. Corozo, a vegetable nut, on anything matte. Metal buttons if you want a blazer in the strict naval sense, and we would steer most clients away from them unless they want the jacket to be read that way. Patch pockets as a default, flapped if you prefer, and a ticket pocket on a tweed if you have the height for it. Working cuffs, a contrast lining, a hand-stitched edge: a jacket is where this house gets to have some fun. The materials themselves are described in suit buttons.

Who we make them for

Men whose work no longer requires a suit but still requires presence. Men who travel and want one jacket that will go everywhere. Men who own four suits and nothing to wear at the weekend. Women, too, and a great deal more often than they expect: a jacket drafted for a woman is one of the most useful garments we make, and the house dresses women as well as men.

You will meet Robb or Ben, and one of us is always in the room. That does not change.

How it works, and how long it takes

The consultation runs an hour and there is no charge for it. We talk about how you will actually wear the jacket, look at cloth in daylight, and take about thirty measurements along with three photographs, which record posture in a way a tape cannot. From those we draft a pattern that belongs to you and stays on file, so a second jacket is straightforward.

Making runs four to twelve weeks, toward the longer end in an imported cloth. Fifty per cent is taken as a deposit when the cloth is chosen. Fittings are unlimited and alterations on garments we made are complimentary for the first year. We no longer take alterations in as a separate job, and we do not work on garments made elsewhere.

We are by appointment, Monday to Sunday, roughly nine until six, with 48 hours of notice, and parking is free front and back.

A jacket is also the sensible way to meet a tailor, because it takes the same measurements and the same care as a suit and you will wear it ten times as often. By the time it is finished you will know whether you want this house cutting custom suits Los Angeles for you as well. The bespoke suit cost Los Angeles page sets out how we price, and the custom tailor Los Angeles page explains how the house works. When you are ready, book a fitting, take an hour at calendly.com/info-robbp/bespoke-mr-james-fitting, or call 310-503-3592.

Questions we are often asked

What is the difference between a blazer and a sport coat?

A blazer, strictly, is a navy jacket of nautical descent, often with metal buttons, in a hopsack or serge. A sport coat is a jacket in a textured or patterned cloth with country ancestry: tweed, flannel, a check, a herringbone. In everyday use the two words mean the same thing, which is a jacket that was never half of a suit. What matters is that the garment was drafted as a jacket from the start rather than orphaned from a suit.

Can you make a jacket without the trousers?

Yes, and it is one of the commissions we most often recommend first. A jacket on its own is cut fully bespoke, full canvas, from a pattern drafted for you alone, with unlimited fittings and a year of complimentary alterations included. It is drawn differently from a suit jacket in the shoulder, the waist, the length, the pockets and the cloth, which is what stops it looking like half of something else.

How much does a custom blazer cost in Los Angeles?

Price follows the cloth, and we settle it with you at the consultation once we know what you want the jacket to do. The making is identical at every level, from the house cloths through to the finest mills, so the only variable is what you choose to have it cut from. The consultation itself takes an hour and is free, and nothing is owed until a cloth is chosen.

What cloth works best for a sport coat in Los Angeles?

A navy wool hopsack, if you are having one. It breathes, it resists creasing, it travels, and it sits correctly with grey flannel, cream cotton and denim alike. After that, a high-twist wool or fresco for the warm months, linen if you are at peace with creases, and a soft brown tweed for winter and for travelling east.

Can I wear a suit jacket as a blazer?

Usually not well. A suit jacket was drawn to sit above matching trousers in a smooth dark cloth, so worn alone it tends to read as an orphan: the shoulder is too formal, the skirt too long and the cloth too flat. A navy suit jacket with grey trousers is the most common version of this mistake in Los Angeles. A jacket drafted as a jacket solves it properly.

How long does a custom blazer take?

Four to twelve weeks, toward the longer end of that range in an imported cloth. A fifty per cent deposit is taken when the cloth is chosen, and fittings in between are unlimited. If you have a date in mind, tell us at the consultation and we will say plainly whether it is comfortable or whether it needs to be treated as a rush.

Do you make jackets for women?

Yes. The house dresses women as well as men, and a jacket drafted for a woman is among the most useful things we make, since it does the work of a suit without the formality. It is cut from the same thirty or so measurements and the same three photographs, on a pattern drawn for you, and it is made by the same hands in the same atelier.

Do you alter a blazer I bought somewhere else?

No. We no longer take alterations in as a separate job, and we do not work on garments made elsewhere. On garments we have made, alterations are complimentary for the first year and we go on looking after them long after that. If a bought jacket does not fit at the shoulder, the honest answer is that it cannot be put right, for the reasons set out in suit shoulder construction, and the next jacket should be drafted for you.