Try This On For Size

So while I'm working very minimally for Jennaleigh Bridal (also affiliated with I and A Tuxedo) I have to memorize a whole buttload of information about measurements. I know how to take in or let out a sleeve or a pant leg, and I can measure men for shirts and pants. But the real memorization comes into play when we get to the jacket. Do you know how many jackets there are? Like, thirty. And they each have their own subtle differences that I'm supposed to understand and separate by price in my head. Bah. So I figured while I have to memorize all this information, I might as well educate you guys. Suckers.

The classic tuxedo has a few distinct qualifications: it has a satin lapel and is made of either worsted wool, super 100 wool (lighter, more breathable, and more expensive wool) or a silk and wool blend (for striped suits). The pants have a satin stripe down the outseam and typically come with pleats, but for some reason this is embarrassing for European customers, so we also carry flat-fronted pants. (They like no room in their pants. It's really uncomfortable and weird to dress the European tourists.) The shirt is either a 400 wingtip shirt or a 200 laydown collar shirt. Laydowns look just like any other dress shirt except that we insert studs in the button holes and every shirt is designed to hold cufflinks. The 400s have a stiff straight collar that bends slightly at the edges. Jonathan wore a 400 with a 2-button notch jacket for his wedding (the Centennial, as far as I can tell). There's also the Mandarin shirt, which has a button covering at the neck and the collar stands straight up an inch high. It looks Asian-ish and is popular for proms.

Now then, the jackets. We have dozens of kinds and I can tell you where almost all of them are in the store. I think. But I'm not gonna write all that down. I just wanna get down the different kinds. There's the shawl, which has a a smooth, unpointed lapel that ends in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 buttons, depending on whether it's single-breasted (462), double-breasted (1001), or carries extra buttons somewhere (Positano, Alpha, DBDB, or PSDBB). The Dimension II is a double-breasted 1001 with an extra layer of shawl. It's a little odd.

The Verdi, Mirage, and Apollo are 3/4-length jackets with Mandarin collars. We reserve the extra long 3/4-length jackets for extra tall men. The Bohmen would look very nice in a 3/4 jacket, like the Cannes, Matrix, or Napoleon, which are long jackets, but with a lapel. The Matrix has a crazy checkered pattern on the lapel, and the Mirage has no lapels or buttons and also comes in striped. The Cutaway is a 3/4-length jacket that tapers to the back and can come in grey. British guys getting married love to wear that one, because they like to wear colors other than black for weddings, so we carry grey, latte, ivory, and white in a lot of our styles.

An old-fashioned style is the Peak design, which is like a notched lapel except one of the notches extends farther than the other one. A reverse peak is found only on the Napoleon. Then the most common style is the notch. The only difference between the Centennial jacket and a regular jacket (standard 1- or 3-button notch) is the satin-lined lapel. The Centennial has two buttons, and it was designed on the 100-year anniversary of the tuxedo company that designed it. It's a remake of the original James Bond tux, which I think is pretty cool. We also have the Savoy, which has a velvet trim along the lapel, and the Jaguar, which has these really suave stripes running down it. I like the C20 Shiny, which has some sort of sparkly material added into it, so that it glimmers a little. We call it the Vegas tux, because tourists love the glamour it adds when they're under a lot of night light. It also shows up really well in pictures. Then there's the C82110, which is a claiborne, so it's really expensive. The Nuvo II has three layers of lapel, and the Phoenix is my favorite because it is super light and has a much thinner lapel than any other. It looks great on tall thin men. Josh would look fantastic in it.

Anyhoo, there are a lot more, but I just realized how boring this blog is, so Ima stop here. We also have around 370 wedding dresses from sizes 2 (0) through 52, with the largest selection between 8 and 16. Prices range from $150 t0 $1000 and we also sell gowns for around $1400. But they're coutoure dresses, so they're made in Spain by one of the best designers, hand-stitched, and designed to order, so I don't wanna hear whining about the price. When I told my boss I spent about $200 on my own wedding dress, she almost choked on her trail mix. Yup. I can't even rent a dress that cheap at Jennaleigh.

Anyway, that's an idea of the kinds of tuxedos and dresses we carry. I imagine almost no one read this whole blog because it's surprisingly boring, but I'm posting it anyway because, well, I took the time to write it. At best, it was a nice review of the things I'm supposed to be remembering. Next time, maybe I'll detail how we clean returned dresses. That's a nightmarish tale of scrubbing and OxiClean the likes of which no one has read before. Maybe I won't scare you guys with that kind of stuff. I don't know.