Italian Cut Suits and Slim Fit Suits-How They Differ

Posted by Aaron Sarfati on Jul 19, 2023

To start off, all slim fit suits are Italian style but not all Italian Cut Suits are slim fit. Sounds confusing right. It's not. I will explain how they differ in this article. If you are into men clothing especially suits, you will have noticed that Slim Fit Suits have appeared literally out of blue and are worn by most fashion minded young men under 35 almost exclusively due to the skinny jean fashion mentality. These suits have become literally the only style of suit that young guys will wear.

Now if you're familiar with Italian cut suits you will know that most of them are have a standard length jacket of 31.5 inches long and are usually single breasted that may come with either 2 or 3 buttons on the front of the jacket. On a true slim fit suit, you will notice that the jackets are actually an inch shorter cut than standard Italian cut suits all with keeping with slimmer looking silhouette. That is not to say that an Italian cut suit is some boxy looking ensemble. Not at all. It's just that if you took an Italian style suits and sort of removed any excess fabric in the cut, you will get a true slim fit suit.


Now if you think that an inch less length in the jacket and slightly tighter fit is the difference from an Italian style cut suit and slim fit style, you would be mistaken. On a slim fit suit since everything is a bit more exaggerated compared to an Italian cut suit, you will notice that the sleeves are also tighter fitting and the armholes rise even more than what you would already find on an Italian style suit. It's almost like they go right to the armpits in tailoring. That is why you really need to be on the thin side to properly pull off wearing them because they are so highly tailored.

On an Italian cut suit, the pants are almost always pleated in either a single pleat cut or double pleat front which you will never ever find on a slim fit suit. In fact, since slim fit suits are worn by Generation Y Guys, they won't have pleats because pleats are considered fuddy duddy and old fashioned. Something your Dad would wear. We're talking slim fit pants with a flat front or pleat free style here.

The lapels on slim fit suits are also a style touch that has not been left alone as well. We all know that the lapel width changes from going wider to average width to narrow as fashion changes. On a true slim fit suit, they take the narrow lapels and make them even narrower than what you would find on your classic Italian cut suit. It's all about exaggerating what an Italian style suit has and making it even slimmer looking in appearance. So now you have learned what the differences of what comprises an Italian cut suit from slim fit suits.