Quality of a suit

Building off of the relatively bad impression of Senli and Frye, I got around to thinking about what actually makes a good suit, or a good jacket. From my, i.e. the consumer's, perspective, three dimensions are easily identifiable: 1) the quality of the fabric, 2) the quality of work, and 3) the quality of "fit/style". I'm sure more can be identified and there is a bit of possible overlap between the categories, but for my purposes I believe this approach to be sufficient for the time being.

The quality of the fabric is, I believe, the easier of the group to understand. While not entirely disambiguous, the qualities of fabrics can be relatively objectively assessed via a couple of different viewpoints. On one hand the durability of the fabric is fairly relevant and contributes to the longetivity of the garment. On the other hand some fabrics are woven with methods which involve more labor or are more technically difficult to do, adding a certain scarcity/rarity aspect and raising the perceived value of the fabric in some circles. Also the material of the fabric contributes to the quality with for instance synthetic materials often being less valued based on arguments regarding e.g. breathability of the fabric while cashmere is often considered to be something aspirational based on again the scarcity and fineness. Ultimately this dimension will need to be discussed in the context of the customer and the attributes need to be scaled based on what the customer wants.

The quality of work in turn refers to the technical quality of the labor that goes into making the garment. Some people like to highlight that garments made by hand are better than garments made by machine, but I somehow prefer the more practical stance of using machines where they are better and using hands where they are better. Not being trained in tailoring, I'm of course relatively ill-equipped to assess quality of work very objectively. However, ultimately I think this dimension should also contribute to the longetivity of the garment in addition to linking to the style and fit of the garment.

The final dimension is then of course the fit and style of the garment. No amount of quality fabric and quality worksmanship will help if the fit and style do not match with what the customer wants. This category is most probably the most subjective of the three and is determined the most by what the customer actually wants. This also poses a big problem in e.g. bespoke tailoring as the customer needs to be able to communicate clearly to the tailor what is wanted. Or on the other hand the tailor must be competent enough to present the right questions to get the information from the customer.

The second and third dimensions have fairly much overlap. For instance from the dimension of fit/style, I could say that I aesthetically like a spalla camicia shoulder, but this also directly links to the quality of worksmanship as a spalla camicia shoulder obviously is a fairly well defined technical way of attaching the sleeve to the jacket's torso. Other similar examples can be identified with relative ease.

But this was just to write down some of my thoughts on how I approach the issue of assessing clothes. Also, as a brief update, Mr. Frye has yet to get back to me regarding the email I sent him after receiving my suit and overcoat, so another thing to consider is the quality of customer service, which in the case of Senli and Frye has also been found lacking.