# What does "darted" mean?



## 10gallonhat (Dec 13, 2009)

I saw someone talking about a darted jacket and I googled it and couldn't find any good explanations. Thanks :icon_smile:


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## jean-paul sartorial (Jul 28, 2010)

A dart is a seam in a piece of fabric to get rid of excess material and give it a contour to fit your bodies shape. A basic example is the back of a shirt.

Look at the back of a shirt where there is a seam where the top/shoulders meet the bottom half of the shirt in back. Sometimes there will be two little folds sewn into the seam near the sides. Those are side pleats. Sometimes there will be two little folds right in the middle, creating a little rectangle that goes down your back. That's a box pleat. Sometimes there are no pleats at all, but if you look really close (or at least hopefully you have to look really close), you'll see two seams coming up from the bottom of the shirt. Like this guy:










Those are darts.

And sometimes a dress shirt will have neither pleats or darts creating a clean look from the back, but often with some sacrifice in fit and/or extra expense.

The two main reasons you wouldn't want a dart is because you don't want that piece of clothing fitted. Like a t-shirt. Or a sack-suit which is supposed to hang on you like... well, a sack. The other reason is you prefer a cleaner look and don't like the seam. The main reason you'd want a dart is because you like things fitted, and cheap. A dart is generally one of the simplest way to deal with excess fabric. If you really like things contoured, you'll probably have to have some darts in there. If you go to a really good tailor or get something made bespoke, they have clever ways of using existing seams and measuring so as to have less excess in the first place and you can get something slim-fitted and no darts. But you pay a price.

Usually when people talk about darted jackets it's in the sack suit vs Italian slim context and they are saying they don't really want the "modern" look suit.


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## CuffDaddy (Feb 26, 2009)

Agreed re shirts. Non-darted suits are truly rare except for j press.


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## Starch (Jun 28, 2010)

What the previous answers say is correct (except that there are _some_ other sources of undarted, _i.e._ "sack" suits, though not a ton of them).

In the suit context, the darts are in the front, running vertically from above to below the waist area, about halfway between the side and middle on both sides of the suit.

Look at this link and use the little zoom tool.

https://www.brooksbrothers.com/IWCa...=TAN-BROWN&sort_by=&sectioncolor=&sectionsize=

The pattern makes it easy to see the dart on the left panel of the suit (right side of the photo, since we're facing the guy).

Oh, yeah - and here's an _un_darted suit, and not from J. Press. Though, yeah, they're pretty rare, even at Brooks Brothers:

https://www.brooksbrothers.com/IWCa...6&Product_Id=1459411&default_color=Stone#null


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## CuffDaddy (Feb 26, 2009)

Good post, Starch. My main point, poorly expressed, us that the term "darted suit" simply means a suit with darts. If someone is using it to describe the relative difference in cut between an A&S-style drape cut and a Prada ultra-slim suit, they are just being ignorant. Both will have darts. Sack suits are a very particular thing.

I will not get started again on the fiction that there even is such a thing as an "Italian" cut. Or a British cut for that matter.


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