It takes research, reading reviews and asking people you trust for their experience.
One general rule of thumb that has worked well for me, is to look at how much marketing focus is on selling you a lifestyle and the brand name itself. The higher the focus is on brand name and identity, the less they trust the product to sell itself on its inherent qualities.
Unfortunately there is no easy way to ascertain the quality of a particular item. You may be buying online, with only pictures and a description to go on. Sometimes the quality looks and feels acceptable in the store, but the workmanship itself is bad, so the item falls apart after a short time.
You can certainly learn to distinguish quality by feeling the fabric and looking at the stitching, but there are so many places to hide shoddy quality out of sight. What I've concluded is that I generally go for items with as little or as discreet branding as possible, as my very first filter. The flashier an item is, the lower I expect the quality to be. It also meshes will with my desire to not be a walking advertising banner. That considerably narrows the list of items I'll have to research in detail.
Learning which manufacturers and retailers can be trusted is hard. They may change their suppliers, but keep the same product name, it's hard to know this, unless they specifically tell you. Some online retailers will have only the barest possible information on a product, such as nominal size and color and nothing else, while others will give you an entire rundown of the materials used, which thoughts went into the design, how you can expect a given cut to fit and a full listing of all the important measurements, plus tell you where it was manufactured. That last bit is shockingly absent on so many online shops.
And please do try to go for local production and organic/repurposed materials whenever possible :-)
Comments
It takes research, reading reviews and asking people you trust for their experience.
One general rule of thumb that has worked well for me, is to look at how much marketing focus is on selling you a lifestyle and the brand name itself. The higher the focus is on brand name and identity, the less they trust the product to sell itself on its inherent qualities.
Unfortunately there is no easy way to ascertain the quality of a particular item. You may be buying online, with only pictures and a description to go on. Sometimes the quality looks and feels acceptable in the store, but the workmanship itself is bad, so the item falls apart after a short time.
You can certainly learn to distinguish quality by feeling the fabric and looking at the stitching, but there are so many places to hide shoddy quality out of sight. What I've concluded is that I generally go for items with as little or as discreet branding as possible, as my very first filter. The flashier an item is, the lower I expect the quality to be. It also meshes will with my desire to not be a walking advertising banner. That considerably narrows the list of items I'll have to research in detail.
Learning which manufacturers and retailers can be trusted is hard. They may change their suppliers, but keep the same product name, it's hard to know this, unless they specifically tell you. Some online retailers will have only the barest possible information on a product, such as nominal size and color and nothing else, while others will give you an entire rundown of the materials used, which thoughts went into the design, how you can expect a given cut to fit and a full listing of all the important measurements, plus tell you where it was manufactured. That last bit is shockingly absent on so many online shops.
And please do try to go for local production and organic/repurposed materials whenever possible :-)