Quality in clothing is a set of decisions made during construction, and most of those decisions leave a physical trace. You can read the traces in less time than it takes to try the garment on, and the reading has nothing to do with the name on the label. A famous label on a badly built garment is still a badly built garment, and an unknown label on a well-built one is still worth your money.
The trick is knowing where the evidence sits. Turn the garment inside out, hold it up to the light, and work through the same handful of places every time.
A quick pass, in order
Work through the same sequence on every garment, and the whole judgement takes about a minute.
- Turn it inside out and look at the seam allowances, and at whether the raw edges are enclosed in the seam or left exposed and serged.
- Check the pocket bags for size and material, and the mouths of the pockets for the small dense bar tacks that stop them tearing.
- Look at the buttonholes for dense, even stitching, and at the buttons for a shank and tidily finished thread.
- Bend the collar and the front edge to feel whether the stiffening is fused and whether it has begun to bubble or delaminate.
- Hold the garment against the light and check whether the stripes or the checks line up at the seams that show.
- Run the zip, see how it has been set into the garment, and look at the lining for a pleat across the back of the shoulders.
Start with the seam allowances
The seam allowance is the strip of fabric left beyond the stitch line. Its width and how it has been finished tell you what kind of factory made the garment, and what it will do after a few washes.
A narrow allowance that has been trimmed close and serged, with an overlock stitch that wraps the raw edge, is cheap and fast. It works, but there is nothing to let out later, and on a loose weave the overlocking can pull and pucker. A generous allowance, especially one that has been pressed open and finished, gives you room to alter and suggests a maker who expected the garment to be adjusted. The best case is an enclosed seam, a French seam or a flat-felled seam, where the raw edges are folded inside the join and there is nothing exposed to fray at all. You will see these on good shirts, workwear and anything designed to be worn hard.
Also look at how the allowance has been graded. At a bulky intersection, such as where a sleeve meets a side seam, a careful maker trims each layer to a different width so the join lies flat. If everything is the same thickness, you will feel a lump through the cloth.
Look inside the pockets
Pocket bags are where makers economise visibly. A good bag is cut from a decent cloth, sometimes the same fabric as the shell, and is large enough to hold a hand or a phone without straining. A cheap one is a scrap of thin lining, often barely bigger than the opening.
Check the mouth of the pocket as well. There should be a bar tack, a small dense patch of stitching, at each end of the opening to stop the fabric tearing. On a pocket with no bar tack, the corners will have already begun to split if the garment has been worn. On trousers, look at the front pocket stays and the shape of the bag; a curved bag set into a facing will sit better than a rectangle stitched to the side seam.
Read the buttonholes and the buttons
Buttonholes are a reliable index. A well-made buttonhole has dense, even stitching all the way round, a clean cut through the middle, and enough length that the button passes without force. On tailored clothing you may find a bound buttonhole, where a strip of fabric forms the lips of the opening, which takes far more time and shows on the outside as a neat rectangle.
Buttons should be sewn with a shank on thick fabric, so the button sits proud of the cloth, and the spare thread should be visible on the reverse. A row of buttons with crossed, careless stitching, or buttons sewn tight against heavy wool, is a sign of rushed work. Check the stance too: the buttons should line up with the buttonholes without pulling the front edge out of line.
Interfacing and the roll of a collar
Interfacing is the stiffening inside a collar, a cuff, a waistband or a front edge. It comes in two kinds. Fused interfacing is glued to the fabric with heat; sewn interfacing is stitched in and holds its shape independently. Fused interfacing is faster and is used almost everywhere, but it can bubble or delaminate with age and heat.
You can often feel the difference. Bend a collar in your hands and let it go. A well-interfaced collar rolls smoothly and springs back; a fused one feels stiff and flat, or crinkles. On a secondhand garment, run your fingers along the front edge and the collar and feel for bubbles or a rippled surface. If the interfacing has already separated, no amount of pressing will restore it.
Stripes, checks and pattern matching
Pattern matching is one of the clearest signals of care, because it costs fabric and time. On a striped shirt, the stripe should run continuously from the body across the chest pocket, and the yoke should meet the body without a jump. On the side seams, the lines should meet at the same height. On a check, the horizontal and vertical lines should align at the centre front, the placket and the pockets.
Perfect matching at every seam is not always possible without wasting a great deal of cloth, so a maker will prioritise the visible ones: the centre front, the pocket, the yoke. What you are looking for is evidence that someone thought about it, rather than stripes that collide at random.
Zips, linings and the finishing touches
A zip should run smoothly, sit flat, and be set into a facing or a placket rather than stitched straight onto the surface with the tape exposed. Metal zips generally outlast plastic ones and are a sign that a maker expected the garment to last. Look at the top and bottom of the zip tape; if it is sewn over the raw edge with no cover, the tape will fray.
On a lined jacket or coat, look at how the lining hangs. There should be a pleat or an extra fold across the back of the shoulders, which gives the lining room to move when you raise your arms. A lining cut tight will tear at the armholes within a season. Check the hem of the lining too; it should hang slightly loose rather than being stitched tight to the shell, and the seams inside it should be finished.
What good construction does not tell you
A well-made garment is not automatically the right garment. Construction says nothing about whether the colour suits you, whether the fit works on your frame, or whether it duplicates something already hanging in your wardrobe. Nor is quality uniform across a maker’s output: the same label can appear on a garment built to a high standard and on a cheaper line made to hit a price.
Use construction to decide between two garments you already want, and to avoid paying a premium for something that will fall apart. Do not use it to justify buying a beautiful object you will never wear. The best-made garment in the shop is still the wrong purchase if it does not fit the life you actually have.