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470 entries across tailoring, shoemaking, cloth and craft Reference publication: we sell nothing and rank nobody for payment Every figure carries its source and the date it was checked

Tailoring style · United States

The American sack suit

Straight, soft and undarted: a coat designed to fit many bodies acceptably rather than one perfectly.

The sack suit hangs straight from a natural, unpadded shoulder with no front darts and little waist shaping, usually with a three-button front rolled to the middle button. It is the one original American contribution to cut, and it was designed for the rack.

A natural-shoulder sack jacket
A natural-shoulder sack jacket

A garment shaped by manufacturing

Remove the darts and the waist suppression and you remove most of what makes a jacket specific to one body. That is a flaw in a bespoke coat and a feature in a manufactured one: a sack fits a wide range of men tolerably, which is exactly what a garment sold in graded sizes needs to do.

Brooks Brothers is the firm most associated with it, and the American universities are where it became a uniform. The look (soft shoulder, three-roll-two front, flapped patch pockets, hooked centre vent) is the basis of what is now called Ivy.

The details

A soft, unpadded natural shoulder; no front darts; little waist suppression; a three-button front with the lapel rolled to the middle button; a single hooked centre vent; and frequently patch or flapped patch pockets. Trousers are cut with a full rise and often no pleats.

The lapel roll is the detail collectors care about: a properly rolled three-roll-two front curves softly over the top button rather than being pressed flat.

The honest assessment

The sack does not flatter most figures the way a shaped coat does; it makes almost everyone look somewhat rectangular. Its defenders regard that as the point, an anti-vain garment, deliberately unassertive, and there is something to that argument.

It has also aged unusually well as a shape, because it never depended on a fashionable waistline. A 1962 sack jacket looks dated in its cloth and its lapel width, not in its architecture.

Natural
no padding · follows the body
Soft
a thin pad · a gentle line
Spalla camicia
sleeve gathered like a shirt
Roped
sleeve head rises in a ridge
Extended
built out past the shoulder
The shoulder, five ways Right shoulder, front-on; the dashed line is the wearer’s own. Spalla camicia is the Neapolitan signature. The roped shoulder is Roman and Parisian in origin, and Cifonelli’s is the best known. The extended shoulder belongs to the sharper end of Savile Row and to the Nutters silhouette. The shoulder is where a house’s cut is most visible and hardest to fake, because it is built inside the coat. Diagram drawn for Il Sartoriale.

At a glance

Shoulder
Natural, unpadded
Front
Undarted
Button stance
Typically three-roll-two
Waist
Little suppression
Country
United States

Houses working in this tradition

  1. 938 Broadway, New York, built in 1883–84 as a Brooks Brothers store Brooks Brothers New York · 1818

    Brooks Brothers is America's oldest clothing retailer, which popularised ready-made suits in standard sizes, the button-down collar and the American Ivy look.
  2. An illustration of the house's recorded cut: soft shoulder, full canvas chest, american, moderately structured. Not a photograph of the house's own work. Martin Greenfield Clothiers New York

    Martin Greenfield Clothiers is a Brooklyn suit factory, run by a Holocaust survivor, that makes custom suits and produces for several American brands.
Last reviewed: September 2026 Report an error on this page

Related

CountryUnited States BrandBrooks Brothers Tailoring styleIvy style Glossary termThree-roll-two HistoryThe rise of ready-to-wear CityNew York Bespoke tailorOxxford Clothes Glossary termSuppression Bespoke tailorMartin Greenfield Clothiers ShoemakerAlden BrandRalph Lauren Purple Label BrandTom Ford
Picture credits 3
  1. A natural-shoulder sack jacket: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art
  2. Brooks Brothers 938 Broadway: Photograph · Beyond My Ken · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
  3. An illustration of the house's recorded cut: soft shoulder, full canvas chest, american, moderately structured. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art

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