You know the top. The one you reach for first, the one that somehow always looks right, the one you'd repurchase and own in every color. I'm like that. I've always preferred a really good basic uniform: a great white shirt and a tailored pair of trousers. They can take you anywhere. But there are levels, you know? So why do some things just work and others don't? A top that fits is engineered to fit, decided long before it ever met you, in a handful of choices you were never meant to notice. Allow us to ruin the magic.
The truth is, it all answers to three basic things: balance, proportion, and scale, and the shapes that make great fit. Balance is whether the top sits evenly, its seam placements perfectly considered. Proportion and scale are how the parts get along with each other, and this is really style-specific. Great pattern shapes are only known by those who have done it over and over again, against thousands of bodies, then painstakingly analyzed the information. This is no exaggeration. This is the truth of the matter. If you can manage to nail these, the wearer puts the garment on and can relax. Miss them and no clever detail underneath can talk its way out of it. This is the foundation, and everything else is just trying.
Then comes the short list, and we are, frankly, insufferable about all of it. Seam placement, because a seam a half inch off its mark throws off everything around it and tries to pretend it didn't. Armholes cut with real precision, since the armhole is where a top is quietly won or lost. Too low and the whole thing drags every time you move; too tight and it picks a fight that lasts all day. A neckline balanced to actually flatter, not just finish the edge. And shoulder position, which we treat with something close to reverence, because the shoulder is the hook the entire top hangs from and the one thing nobody can fix after the fact. Get the shoulder wrong and you can tailor until sunset. It will never be right.
None of this shows up the way a color or a print does. Fit is the engineering underneath, the reason one top looks considered and another looks like it's just covering for you until something better comes along. And the thing about it is, it does not matter how much you pay for a garment. Yes, a great fabric helps, but truly it comes back to the person who designed and built it, those behind the brand responsible for this very task: making the product perfect. Well, the team at E&Co obsesses over every eighth of an inch, so that you get to do the best possible thing with a great top, which is not think about it at all. We would do it anyway, but we hope you feel the difference.
Jami
