How to Judge Garment Quality in Ten Minutes

Price is a poor proxy for quality. A $300 blazer can be worse made than a $120 one, and the difference is visible in about ten minutes if you know where to look.

This is the checklist we run on anything we intend to wear for years.

1. Turn it inside out first

The outside of a garment is designed to look good. The inside tells you how it was made.

• Seam allowance: a clean, even overlock with no loose threads. Serged edges that unravel at the touch will unravel in the wash.
• French seams on a sheer or unlined garment are a good sign — they enclose the raw edge entirely.
• Bartacks at stress points: pocket corners, fly, the top of a vent. A small dense stitch bar there means someone thought about wear.
• No puckering. Wavy seams mean the fabric was fed through the machine unevenly, and it will not press flat.

2. Weigh the fabric in your hand

Substance is not the same as thickness. A good cotton poplin is thin and dense; a cheap one is thin and limp.

• Hold it to the light. You should not be able to read text through a shirt, a knit, or a trouser.
• Scrunch and release. Good wool and cotton spring back. Blends with high synthetic content stay creased.
• Rub it. A fabric that pills on the shelf will pill on you within a month.

Fabric composition on the label is useful but incomplete: 100% cotton can be excellent or terrible depending on the yarn and weave. Use the label as a hint, and your hands as the test.

3. Check the pattern matching

On anything with a print, a check or a stripe, look at the side seams and the pocket flaps. Do the lines meet? On a well-made garment they do, because someone spent the extra fabric to match them. On a cheap one they do not, because matching costs money.

This is one of the fastest signals available. A checked shirt with mismatched side seams is not a garment built to last.

4. Buttons and buttonholes

• Buttonholes should be dense and clean, with no loose threads, and should be the right size for the button. A button that barely fits its hole will come undone all day.
• Buttons should be thick enough not to bend, and sewn with a shank — a small stem of thread under the button — so the fabric does not pull.
• Spare button sewn inside the hem is a small sign of a maker who expects the garment to be worn.

5. Linings and interlinings

A lined jacket should have a lining that is attached with some slack at the hem — a "pleat" or "kick pleat" — so it does not tear when you sit. A lining sewn tight to the hem is a shortcut.

In a blazer, feel the front panel. A floating canvas interlining gives the chest a slight roll and will mould to you over time. A fused interlining is glued and will bubble after dry cleaning. You cannot always tell by touch, but you can often tell by price and by how the lapel rolls.

6. Hems and allowances

Look at the inside of a hem. A generous allowance — 3cm or more — means the garment can be let down or re-hemmed. A skimpy 1cm allowance means it was made to be worn at one length and then discarded.

7. The label, read properly

• Country of manufacture tells you little about quality. The same factory produces excellent and poor work depending on the specification.
• Care instructions that demand dry cleaning for a cotton shirt are a warning, not a luxury.
• Fibre percentages should be specific. "Wool blend" without percentages is a way of hiding a small wool content.

What none of this tells you

Whether it suits you. Quality is a floor, not a ceiling: a beautifully made garment in the wrong colour is still the wrong garment.

Use this checklist to eliminate the garments that will fail. Then choose among the survivors on the basis of how they look on you, which no checklist can decide.

For the pieces worth applying this to first, see the 30-piece checklist and the guide to what makes a good white t-shirt.