Will H. P. Baxxter please give us a guest post on the nature of this suit?
There appears to be something horribly wrong with the sleeves. I know that his posture is absolutely terrible, but it goes beyond that. The sleeves are big at the shoulder and narrow at the cuff. It’s as though he’s bought a fat man’s jacket and had it badly taken in.
OH LOOK, H. P. BAXXTER HAS OBLIGED:-
I really should start charging you for my services, but you may have my guest post on credit. It is ‘spoken for’, in true Savile Row tradition.
When you cut a jacket, you start with the chest piece and shoulders. That is no accident. The complex mechanics between them are the central element of a jacket.
A shoulder seam should sit just wide of shoulder. In other words, You should be able to pinch the seam. That’s about half an inch at most. Muscat appears to have a good inch and a half of slack at the shoulder. One could, of course, sculpt one’s body to fit one’s suit, but the deltoids are slow to respond. In any case, shoulder lifts with bad form will achieve nothing. Far better to use a pair of dumbells.
A structured shoulder works best with a normal or thin body. If you’re fat, an unstructured shoulder looks better.
The other problem here is the chest piece. All properly tailored jackets have a floating chest piece, where the canvassing material is, well, canvassed. On cheaper jackets, this layer is fused to the fabric, creating an awkward puckered ridge on the chest.
Gentlemen with a tendency to manboobage will find that: primo, a canvassed jacket with conform much better to their chest and secundo, that they require more slack under the armpit and just round to the chest.
This leads us to the question of drop and drape. Just a small digression – ask your tailor what drop and drape they offer, and you’ll have the measure of the man. In Malta, the only people not to answer with a blank stare are Cost Borg’s senior staff. Hats off to them.
The drop is the ratio between waist and chest size. Muscat appears to have some difficulties with this.
The drape is the way the shoulder and chest are tailored. A soft drape, developed by the great Frederick Scholte in the 1930s, adds a touch more fabric around the armhole. THIS is exactly what Muscat needs. A Scholte drape.
This is the style favoured by Prince Charles. Have a look at his suits. They are more relaxed around the chest and it’s all due to the Scholte drape, favoured, of course, by his tailors Anderson and Sheppard.
But the real killer here is the shape of that sleeve. A jacket sleeve is not cut in a straight line. It is gently curved, to accommodate the elbow. In other words, it is not a cylinder. So when sleeves are shortened in an off-the-peg suit, the curve will sit higher up. And the whole thing becomes a mess. Sleeves ride up or get horribly puckered. Slack material appears where it shouldn’t.
I’ve never heard of sleeves being taken in at the forearm, so I don’t think that’s a fat man’s jacket at all. It’s a slim-fit jacket, as evidenced by its bumfreezer length and overly padded shoulders.
I said it’s a killer, but on reflection I should have said it’s a mystery.
Look, let me get to the point here. This man can certainly afford a made to measure suit, if he wanted to be stingy. If not, he could afford bespoke. That suit is cheap. And I don’t mean cheap-priced. It may well be expensive. God knows the blasphemy I’ve seen in Europe’s chic districts, with 2000 Euro suits bearing Italian-sounding names but made in China out of polyester and Araldite.
You wear them for three weeks, the fused canvas turns to dust and the fabric starts looking like used wrapping paper.
Let me do what Maltese consultants never do in their reports and end with my recommendations.
1. Muscat needs a valet to brush and press his suits.
2. He needs a style consultant.
3. I am available at 85k per annum for both.
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I think the Maltese expression is “qisu l-imkittef.”
I think a better word would be imbaswar.
You don’t need Baxxter. That suit is an off the shelf Bortex suit that has been shortened and altered to fit a physique that looks its best with a form fitting tailored suit . As such it doesn’t work. It isn’t helped by the fact that Joseph has the posture of a constipated parrot and the hairstyle of a Ukranian Concentration Camp guard.
He manages to slouch whilst standing. This means bad muscle tone. This also means that his trips to the gym are at best desultry if not outright absent.
We will now expound on the colour and texture of the material. This is wool with too much viscose woven into it, so it looks shiny. It’s a suit best used in some kind of ‘precett’ party at the Gondolier Hall or Shantine Hall, where cheap shiny Bortex suits of 80s vintage are taken out for an airing.
The double chin means that he eats too much rice and pasta at too late an hour. And that he doesn’t do weights. He has an overhanging paunch.
All in all, Michelle isn’t doing such a good job of taking care of her man. I’m not surprised. She looks spaced out and not entirely In at the moment. Perhaps the word going round that Joseph isn’t going through his best marital moments is true…he looks like some one who sleeps on the couch.
Enough said. Baxxter, my dear, over to you.
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Gentlemen, if you’re skint, eat less. You’ll save money and you’ll look better in a cheap suit.
Dear (I don’t think you mind) Baxter, allow me just one small question,
Do you have a mirror at home?
If yes. I suggest you have a look at it, now and again,
You might find out that you have changed considerably ,since the days when mummy used to call you,
“Hawn sabih”
Funny you should say so, because I don’t think my mother ever called me “sabih”. She wasn’t into that sort of child-worship. As for my father, now there’s a piece a work!
Yes, I have changed considerably. I’m probably fitter now than I was back then.
I was going to say his hair style is looking like Kim Jong-Un’s more and more each day.
Some time ago I was in one of their shops and heard the shop assistant explaining to a customer how they shorten a sleeve.
They detach the sleeve completely and make it fit according to the required length. That is why we have what Baxxter describes as “a good inch and a half of slack at the shoulder”. The more you shorten the sleeve, the bigger the armhole.
Not quite. The slack comes from the excessively wide shoulders, which are not taken in when the sleeve is simply shortened. You can take in a jacket at the shoulders, but that’s akin to a complete re-tailoring. It’s all made worse when you have a structured jacket. The less padding, the better.
While I’m on the subject of dressing fat men, here’s another suggestion: Wider lapels work better. Narrow ones are for slim fit. You want to draw the eyes away from the waist and onto the shoulders, not emphasise the width of the girth in relation to the lapel. Ever seen how Berlusconi dresses? He may be a philandering bastard, but he’s one sharp dresser.
I think we should really concentrate on the space between the hairline and the top of his ears. Looks like the silhouette of a mountain peak.
It’s the North Face thingy again.
I am sure my good friend Baxxter will respond. And certainly do not want to usurp his satorial response.
However, as a crude Canadian leather lover (love my eel skin cowboy boots), when I see a photo of a fat bag of shit wearing an even worse bag of an ill-fittiing shit, sorry, suit, I must surely comment.
I think there’s a Leather Lovers’ Section in the MLP, Harry. You’ll find it between LGBT Labour and Labour Marsa Horseracing Veterans. You may wish to apply.
And then there’s that scalp-lifting scar well in evidence as well.
Looks like something out of a horror movie.
Hint for Ladies : why not ask Cost Borg’s senior staff for H.P. Baxxter’s identity ?
And Joseph Muscat’s policies, such as they are, are an even greater mess.
The man has no redeeming feature. He is fake and cheapo through and through; the human equivalent of the sort of products marketed on TV sales programmes.
Is there no end to Baxxie’s talents?
Mr. Baxxter you must be one of those torturers that keeps one with his arms splayed on a little podium with slivers of chalk and needles at hand for numerous hours.
Fitting new suits is time consuming. Muscat is not the type at all with the busy schedule of making sure we are IN.
Well he might have come with that campaign shout of ‘I’m in’ after getting into this suit. It looks like he just made it into this suit and slept in it for the next fortnight because he couldn’t make it back out.
Baxxter, I’m intrigued. You truly seem to be a man of many, ahem, suits.
If like a book, Joseph were to be judged by his jacket, then he’s not worth reading.
Baxxter there is one aspect you haven’t touched upon and that is Joseph’s arsehole chewing up his trousers.
I have noticed from previous photos that copious amount of material gets stuck up his backside with the result that he ends up with ankle huggers. Not a good look.
He mustn’t be seen pulling it out with his bare hands so I thought perhaps some sort of sink plunger might do the job.
Have you any suggestions?
That’s the fabric riding up into the ample inside leg. Very difficult for the tailor to find a way around that. Perhaps stirrups, like a Guardsman’s trousers?
High-waisted trousers would certainly help. But then you don’t get them on slim-fit suits.
Ex-De La Salle probably remember our famous “Sir” Taylor used to tell us to stand straight, chest out, head back during most of our morning assemblies. Muscat should try that.
Try going to any convent school for that. The nuns are brillilant at teaching good posture.
Me thinks that Joseph Muscat has been doing his upper body workout at the Popeye’s Spinach gym – especially that training where he lifts both arms like when saluting a big crowd from a balcony – wearing that suit.