Length is nearly always possible. Width is possible within the seam allowance the original maker left inside the garment. Shape is possible but expensive. Those three sentences cover most of what a tailor can and cannot do to a suit you already own, and knowing which category your problem falls into tells you roughly what you are in for before anyone quotes you anything.
The three jobs, in order of difficulty
Almost every alteration request is one of three things, and they are not remotely equal.
Length
Trouser hems, jacket sleeve length, skirt and dress hems, shirt sleeves. This is the routine end of the trade — the cloth is already there and the work is a matter of measuring, marking and sewing. Length is the one thing you can nearly always assume is fixable, including on cheap garments, and it is also the alteration that makes the largest visible difference for the smallest cost. A trouser leg breaking correctly on the shoe changes how a whole suit reads.
Width
Taking in at the waist, the side seams, the trouser seat, the body of a shirt. Taking a garment in is straightforward, because removing cloth requires no cloth. Letting a garment out is a different question entirely, and the answer is decided by something you cannot see from the outside.
Shape
Reshaping a jacket through the shoulder, changing the trouser rise, reworking a chest that pulls. This is dismantling and rebuilding rather than adjusting. It is real tailoring, it is charged accordingly, and on most garments it is not the right answer.
The inlay decides what is possible
Inside every seam is a folded strip of spare cloth called the inlay, and it is the whole reason one garment can be let out two inches and another cannot be let out at all.
Makers who expect a garment to be adjusted leave generous inlays. Bespoke and good ready-to-wear typically carry enough at the waist and the seat to give a useful margin either way, and most trousers carry an inlay at the centre back seam specifically so the waist can move. Inexpensive off-the-peg tailoring is often cut with almost nothing spare, because that cloth costs money on every unit and sells nothing on the hanger.
None of this is a judgement you have to make yourself. Turn the garment inside out, or bring it to somebody who will, and the answer is visible in under a minute. It is worth doing before you decide how much you are hoping for, rather than after.
What genuinely cannot be rescued
Four situations where the answer is no, or where it should be.
A jacket cut too small across the chest or the shoulders
These are the two measurements that decide whether an off-the-peg jacket is yours or somebody else’s. Everything below them is adjustable. They are not, at least not cheaply.
Cloth worn thin at the stress points
The seat of a trouser, the elbows, the trouser crotch. Alteration moves cloth about; it does not replace what has gone. A patch or a re-lining can extend a garment’s life, but thin cloth beside a fresh seam simply fails next.
A fused jacket whose interlining has started to bubble
In this climate especially, the adhesive holding a fused chest piece to the cloth eventually gives up, and the front takes on a rippled look that no amount of pressing settles. The bond cannot be remade. This is the failure mode worth knowing about before you buy anything at the cheap end of a hot, humid island.
When the work costs more than the garment is worth
This is the most common one and the least often said out loud. A tailor who quotes for structural work on a jacket you bought in an airport sale is answering the question you asked rather than the one you meant.
The traveller’s version of this problem
Two situations come up here far more than they would anywhere else, and both are worth planning for rather than discovering.
The first is the suit that no longer fits after a few years — a common reason people walk in with a garment they otherwise like. If it needs letting out, the inlay decides it, so the honest answer often has to wait until the piece is in front of us. If it needs taking in, it is usually straightforward.
The second is timing. Work that changes how a garment sits on the body needs you present once for the marking and once to confirm, and those two appointments are the real constraint on a short trip, not the sewing. A hem can be done in an afternoon. A jacket reshaped through the waist cannot honestly be promised to somebody flying out in the morning. Bring your dates into the first conversation and the answer you get will be one you can plan around.
What to ask before agreeing to anything
Four questions, and the answers tell you most of what you need.
- Which of the three jobs is this — length, width or shape? It sets the order of magnitude before any figure is discussed.
- How much inlay is in the seam? If the answer is vague, the garment has not been looked at.
- Will the old seam line show? On a pressed, dark, worn garment being let out, sometimes it does.
- Is this worth doing on this garment? A tailor willing to answer no to that question is the one to use.
That last one is the whole test. Our alterations service exists partly to say no to work, and the reason it can afford to is that repeat customers and referrals matter more here than a single invoice — which is also what the reviews people have left us are describing when they mention being told the truth about a garment.
The short version
Length: assume yes. Width: within the inlay, and the inlay is visible in a minute. Shape: possible, skilled, expensive, and right only on a garment worth it. Worn cloth and bubbled fusing: no.
If you are unsure which one you have, the garment answers the question faster than any description of it can.