Shopping Secondhand: What to do with a vintage blazer that doesn’t quite fit in the shoulders?

The trouble with secondhand shopping is you have only one choice of size / colour / style, most of the time. You can’t say – oh I’ll just size up! … But there are tricks you can employ to have something fit better.

For instance, I found this gorgeous, deep, true cherry red blazer in a size Small but it is a TINY BIT too tight in the shoulders (I have larger shoulders, as I am an inverted triangle).

TRUE TIP:

You should always fit the shoulders in a blazer, but sometimes you come across an AMAZING blazer in fantastic quality, in the perfect colour and it is just a little tiny bit off, and in this case… well. I loved it too much.

Luckily, the shoulders were padded so with my larger shoulders I could trick the whole situation and make it fit a tiny bit better if I just removed the padding.

(Normally, I don’t like any padding in blazers as I don’t need it)

So I spent a little time, opened up the bottom hem of the blazer (it was IMPECCABLY sewn), and reached in, pulled out the shoulder pads and picked the threads off them to remove them.

Now there isn’t a strange bump on my shoulder, and it is less noticeable that my arms are fatter than the sleeve itself (I put on a bit of weight in the past 2 years but this will eventually disappear if I stop munching on treats all the time..)

You can see on this shoulder on the right in the photo, this awkward padding and then my arm bulging out just below, accentuating how the blazer sleeves are very slim cut and don’t quite fit:

Another angle:

Now I removed the padding from the blazer on the left side of the photo and it isn’t perfect, but it looks a heck of a lot slimmer and less awkward:

The change is subtle, but for me, makes a huge difference. I can now feel like I have more room to move in my shoulders, it doesn’t awkwardly stick out far beyond my shoulders, and my arms just need to get a tiny bit slimmer (I think in 2 years time it should be good HAHA)… but in the meantime, I can still (and will wear) this incredible shawl blazer in the most gorgeous red colour I have seen.

By the way – the blazer is made in France, is vintage by some random red dot brand, and I scored it for $20! This is worth a mini alteration to me (it is work involved) and was too beautiful to pass up.

And done! <3