How to recognize poor vs good quality in clothes in 5 points Justine Leconte

Hi everyone, it's Justine. Hard to recognize good and bad quality when you're shopping for clothes. There are some elements that are easy to check before you purchase a 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, applications, 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 concrete examples so that you can see what's good and what's not good compared. Fun fact, I own all the garments 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's not body tight, 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 cut one sleeve here. It's not aligned with the fabric, but who cares? So they optimize their fabric consumption and in the end, you end up with pieces cut in all fabric directions. That's why your seams twist more and more 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'll see the colors fade out very quickly with washes. Always. Look at these two spaghetti tops. This one used to be black. To give you a benchmark, this is black. 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. It's just too cheap sometimes. Remember my sweater? Well, 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 the rubber on top. It looked really 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 a 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 a jacquard, the motif is woven or knitted into the fabric. The yarns themselves are of different colors. While for a 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 a 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't 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. It 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 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 mottle, viscose, tensile. They're also of natural origin, but they have better characteristics. They are 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. 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 fibers 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 pockets, 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, they did 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 centimeter of fabric. That's cheap. Then they attached the hem with the invisible five millimeter stitch but it's not tight enough. Five millimeter, it's actually just a temporary stitching. So what happens when you move in this skirt? This here, the hem comes undone. And since we were talking about 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 100% polyester. Not so good. Last one. This one has a full lining. The tucks of the outside fabric 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 it answered 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'll see you Sunday and Monday again and here are two videos for you to watch until then. Take care. Bye-bye.