Hi everyone! It's Justine. How to recognize
good and bad quality when you're shopping
for clothes? There are some elements that
are easy to check before you purchase
the garment and you don't have to be a
fashion designer to be able to spot at
least the signs of poor quality.
In today's video I'd like to tackle cut and
fit. Colors and dyeing. Prints, appliques and
jacquards. Fabric quality and fiber
quality. And then the sewing. And we're
going to look inside garments so you can
see what's good and what's bad. I will
show you complete examples so that you
can see what's good and what's not good
compared. Fun fact, I own all the
garment's you're going to see.
I actually paid money to get them. It was
before I became a designer, I didn't know
any better.
Most of the garments you're going to see
I would never buy again but now that
they're here, let's use them for science.
Good fit and good cut. There are two
signs of poor quality you should
literally run away from. The first one is
poor fit. Look at this nice and colorful
sweater. One question though:
where is the space for the breasts?
It is a boxy cut. It is not body, okay. But
I'm still missing breathing space at the
bust level here. And the fabric is woven,
not knitted so it's not stretching at
all as I move. This garment would be good
if it was either even more boxy, or if I
had at least bust darts, to give the
fabric the shape of the bust, like on a
woman's shirt. Right now this
construction is just not working. And the
second thing is the cutting. When
manufacturers don't care in which
direction they cut the fabric, you get
side seams that twist. That's something
really everyone notices. It's super
annoying and there's nothing you can do
against it. When you take a roll of
fabric, it has a direction: vertically. All
your pattern pieces must be aligned
vertically with the fabric. But then
typically fast fashion brands will say:
"Oh, look! There's still space to get one
sleeve here!" It's not aligning with the
fabric, but who cares!
So they optimize the fabric consumption
and in the end, you end up with pieces cut in
all fabric directions,
that's why your seams twist more and
move with every wash. Colors and dyeing.
You want a colorful, vibrant piece to
remain vibrant over time, right? But when
you buy a piece too cheap, you will see
the colors fade out very quickly with
washes. Always look at these two
spaghetti strap tops. This one used to be black.
To give you a benchmark, this is black. Hehehee
And this other one used to be pink. Now
it just looks like a white top that has
been washed with a pink dress, which lost
its color. Too cheap is just too cheap
sometimes. Remember my sweater?
The care instructions say: not washable, so
they probably tested it and found out
that the blue or the pink bleeds onto the
cream color when you wash it. So they
said, let's just say: don't wash it at all!
But like how is that supposed to work
for me as a consumer? Same issue with
prints and appliques. This one here was
once a vibrant, acid green print with
rubber on top. It looked pretty cool actually.
Now the rubber effect is almost gone. The
T-shirt just looks stiff and old. And the
green is low-quality too, so now this is
fading out as well. This here is a
knitting mistake in the fabric, which I
didn't see when I bought it. And the
hole just kept growing. So if you're
standing in the shop and you have the
choice between two T-shirts. Same price. One is a solid plain color, the other one
has a print on top. Always go for the
solid color because you can be sure that
on the printed version, they cut costs
somewhere else to compensate for the
margin loss and you'll end up with
thinner fabric or with twisting seams.
You just don't know it yet. Go for the
plain one. One question I often get: Why are jacquards
more expensive than prints?
Because in jacquard, the motif is woven or
knitted into the fabric. The yarns
themselves are of different colors. While
for print, you take a finished fabric and
you just apply a layer of colors on top
of it. It is by definition less durable than jacquard. Fabrics and fibers.
If the fabric is too loosely knitted or woven
together,
you can notice that with your finger. You
take the fabric and you try to push, back
and forth – the little loops or the little
weaving. If you can do that with your
fingers,
not so good! it's too loose! A tight knit
will be more dense, it will be heavier. It
will fall nicely, will fall better. When
you buy clothes online, by the way and
you can't touch the fabric, look at the
way the fabric and the weight falls on
the model on the picture and then you'll
know. Then quickly about the fibers
fabric is made of. You have natural
fibers and synthetic ones. Among the
natural fibers, the classic four are silk,
cotton, linen from flax, and wool. Then come
modal, viscose, tencel – they are also of
natural origin, but they have better
characteristics, they're more modern. Like
they are more breathable. They are lighter
on the skin. They don't shrink when you
wash them, etc. I write the name of the
fibers down below in the description box,
so you guys can look them up if you want to.
And then there are the synthetic
fibers. Stay away from acetates, it's also
made of petrol, it's as breathable as
plastic, hehehe, super-sweaty! And then you have
the other ones, like polyester, acrylic,
rayon, etc. There are quite a few ones.
They are chemically made, but chemical fibers are
much more stable than natural fibres and
that's something people don't always
know. A garment that's completely made in
synthetic fibers, is not always the
nicest feeling on the skin, let's be
honest. But the problem is that 100%
cotton is not a guarantee for high
quality anymore either. Because the
cotton production worldwide, just to take
the example of cotton, has been so fast
fashion optimized, that now you can find
really cheap quality cotton and if you
have a T-shirt in that fabric, it's going
to shrink by one size the first time you
wash it! So sometimes, nowadays, a mix of
natural and synthetic fibers is not a
bad choice at all. In fact I like to work
with mixes, especially for thicker
fabrics. You see that in my collection.
Because you have the stability and the
breathability and the nice
properties of the synthetic evolved fibers,
and the nice feeling of the natural ones.
I like fabric mixes. Sewing, stitching,
threads, etc. Now let's look into garments
for real. First the hem. Here on this
piece, the machine wasn't even set up
correctly. The thread is not lying flat
on the fabric, you see how bulky and 3D
it is. That's not good! A good hem looks
like this. That's correct thread tension.
It's lying flat. On the inside, the
stitching also looks clean and tidy. Even
better, you can cover the seam at the hem
with an extra fabric detail, like here. Or
what I did in my collection, is that I
covered the side seams completely with an
organza. It will stay in place forever
and it will not itch on your skin. Then
let's look inside. On this skirt, they
opened the side seams. That's great, because
it's a thick stiff woven fabric. So this way it's
not too bulky.
It keeps everything flat,
it's easy to iron, that's good. But on the
pocket they didn't do a great job. It's
messy really. On high quality pants the
pocket seams are hidden, like here. All
around, you don't see a seam anymore.
On this skirt here, there is something fancy.
They made the hem stitch line invisible,
but inside, they left the edge completely
visible, instead of folding it inwards a
second time. So they basically spared one
centimetre of fabric. That's cheap! Then
they attach the hem with the invisible
5 millimeter stitch, but it's not tight
enough. 5 millimeter is actually just a
temporary stitching. So what happens when
you move in this skirt, this year the hem
comes undone. And since we were
talking about fabric, the outside here is
wool, polyester, 5% others. What the hell
is others? And the inside lining which
touches your skin in the end, is hundred
percent polyester, not so good. Last one.
This one has a full lining. The darts
of the outside fabrics are also on the inside
fabric, so you can actually move in these
garments, that's excellent! You also have a
bit of extra fabric at the hem, extra
lining fabric, that's for comfort. That's
also good for movement, great! The outside
fabric is polyester, that's cheap, but the
inside, next to your skin, is viscose.
Better this way, than the other way around.
At least you have a nice fabric touching
your skin. So next time you go shopping,
you know what to look at, what to look
for and if you see those signs of poor
quality, then definitely the garments
are not worth your money. They're not
going to last that long. I hope you found
this video useful, helpful. I hope in
answering your question about poor
versus good quality. If it did, give the
video a thumb up! Thank you so much!
Also, thank you for 50,000 subscribers.
It's already more by now.
It's growing so fast, it's incredible!
Let me know in the comments below, if you
have questions about poor versus good
quality, or if you have tips to share on
how you shop clothing. I see you Sunday
and Monday again and here two videos for
you to watch until then! Take care!
Bye-bye!