How To Shrink A Suit Jacket? (Make It Smaller!)

Suit jackets are great. They make you look like someone who has his shit together, and sometimes that’s all that matters.

However, often times you would find that off-the-rack suit jackets aren’t going to fit you that well, if at all.

So what should you do if your jacket is too baggy? Is there any way to shrink it?

The only way to shrink a suit jacket is to take it to a tailor. A professional tailor can make small adjustments and alterations to your jacket that will shrink its size.

However, there’s still some information that you need to know, in order to get your jacket to fit you exactly as you want. Hey, who told you that shrinking a blazer is going to be as simple as shrinking a cotton t-shirt?

Let’s start!

How To Shrink A Suit Jacket?

suit jacket sizing

There is only one way to shrink a suit jacket – Taking it to a tailor. A tailor can make small adjustments to your blazer that can end up reducing its size so that it fits you better.

While the internet is littered with DIY tips and hacks, there are certain things that you just can’t hack your way around.

Shrinking a suit jacket is one of those things.

Suits are expensive for a reason because making one is an extremely technical process. There are tons of things that need to be kept in mind, from seam placement to temperature regulation.

So what happens is that unlike a simple t-shirt, which is made from one continuous piece of fabric, a suit jacket employs a lot of different materials, threads, and stitching techniques.

Moreover, all of these items are placed at different locations in the suit jacket, which makes a one-size-fits-all approach impossible.

So, given these arduous limitations, what can you do to make your suit jacket or sports coat smaller?

Take it to a tailor.

That’s it.

Most tailors have a lot of experience in dealing with baggy suits. Therefore, “shrinking them”, which basically refers to reducing the size of the jacket where you want, is not a problem for them.

Besides, tailoring is going to give you the most amount of control over the finished look of your jacket, much more than any other shrinking method.

So simply find out the contact details of your nearest tailor, or ask for a referral from a friend, and you’re good to go.

Can You Shrink A Cotton Suit Jacket?

It is technically possible to shrink a suit jacket that is made out of cotton, but the end result is going to be pretty unreliable in terms of fit.

Okay, let me explain.

There are various types of suit jackets available in the market, and most of them cannot be shrunk without taking the help of a tailor.

The exception to this rule is an unlined lightweight cotton jacket. And when I say lightweight, I mean a jacket that’s really lightweight.

These blazers are typically meant to be worn on casual occasions only, and they are barely thicker than your average button-down.

Such cotton blazers can be shrunk by being washed in hot water.

However, the results of the shrinking process might not always be evenly spread out. It is completely in the realm of possibility that the portion of the jacket you wanted to be shrunk stays the same and everything else reduces in size.

Therefore, even in these edge cases, it makes a lot more sense to go to a tailor rather than trying to shrink your suit jacket in any other manner.

Can you Shrink a Wool Suit Jacket?

A wool suit jacket cannot be shrunk in the dryer or the washing machine. Nor can it be shrunk using any chemical processes. The only way to reduce its size is by taking the garment to a quality tailor.

Wool suits are special because constructing them requires a bunch of different complicated processes.

Basically, there are a lot of moving parts in modern woolen suits. Thus, shrinking them effectively is not really possible because the shell, the threads, the lining, and the fabric may shrink at different rates, destroying the fit of the garment.

Cost Of Making A Blazer Smaller

There are numerous alterations possible, so giving the exact cost can be a bit of a headache. However, on average, you can expect to spend $50-100 in getting your suit jacket tailored.

There are just too many things that you can alter in your jacket – you can get the chest taken in, you can have the length shortened, you can make adjustments to the lapel, you can make adjustments to the sleeve length, and so on and so forth.

And each of these adjustments is going to cost differently depending on how much smaller you want the jacket to be.

Add to that the complexities of demand-supply economics, and providing you with an exact number becomes really difficult.

However, in my experience tailoring suits, most clients ended up spending 50 to 100 dollars on their suits.

Sure, there were some edge cases that were way above this range, but more or less you can expect your costs to be somewhere around these numbers.

Final Remarks

In this article, I tried to go over how you could theoretically make your suit jacket smaller so that it fits you better.

But unlike most things in life, the answer to this question is simple – tailoring.

There is only one true way to make changes to the size and fit of your suit jacket and that’s the process of tailoring.

Just by making a few alterations, you can shrink a baggy sport coat into a well-fitted, body-hugging suit jacket. And that too at an affordable rate.

What else can you want?