What to choose - sports coat or blazer, single breasted or double breasted

James Sleater from the Cad & The Dandy in Savile Row outlines the key differences between a sports coat vs a blazer and the single breasted and double breasted jackets.

Some people often ask about the difference between a blazer and a sports coat and there’s not necessarily cut in any different way, you can often have stylistic details that are different maybe patch pockets, different type of lapel or vent, but actually fundamentally the jacket is the same, it’s a jacket just with certain elements, the blazer for example will sometimes have gold buttons or metal buttons and a sports coat is much more casual and is more like to have dark warm buttons or matching the button to the cloth.

Single Breasted or Double Breasted Jacket?
Two different types of fronts you tend to have a jacket, one is single breasted the other a double breasted. Single breasted you can have three different button positions, a one button, two button and then a three button. The three button obviously closes the front up and you show less waistcoat, shirt, tie. Slightly more formal is double breasted, and there's very many button orientations on that. This is often seen in military garments, and a misconception about a double breasted jacket isn’t as as fitted as a single breasted and actually you can see from this, this is not made for a mannequin, this is a customers jacket. but you can see the shape we’re able to achieve in a double breasted jacket, it doesn’t need to be square and boxy just because there’s more cloth on the front.

This videos are from the Rampley & Co Tailoring Series, you can see more videos and articles about how to dress like a gentleman on the Rampley and Co blog.