What Does "High Quality" Mean in High Fashion?

Okay, this is what a normal T-shirt looks like when it's dropped from 20 feet. This is what a designer T-shirt looks like when it is dropped from 20 feet. You at least want T-shirts to be 200 GSM. The problem is that no websites will tell you what the GSM for their clothing is, but guess what? It doesn't matter at all.

In fact, most TikTok-style advice, such as tips for finding quality clothing, is, for all intents and purposes, totally useless. Don't get me wrong—everything is made much shittier now, obviously. Because everything is objectively worse, there is a ton of content online about how to find quality boots, well-made jeans, and bras that don't completely suck. Most of that advice is misleading at best, but that's only because our modern quality problem is much deeper than people realize.

No setup, no waffling; I am here to figure out what the heck people are talking about when they say that a piece of clothing is high quality. I understand the definition of quality. I even wrote it down for you: the standard of something compared to similar things or how good or bad something is. Sure, fine.

That's not what we're talking about. We all know when we are feeling something that is high quality. It elicits that "oh wow" feeling, right? Two people who are asked separately and don't know each other, given the same garment, would probably agree on whether something is or is not high quality, especially when compared to something similar. I'm going to give you an example here, and it might seem like a silly example, but bear with me because this seemingly silly example illustrates how most fast fashion companies attempt to produce quality items in a laughably bad way.

Let's say we have a guy named Andrew. Andrew has been instructed to make a very high-quality shirt. There are three qualifiers here: Andrew has no experience making clothes, he has essentially unlimited time to make the shirt, and he can only work off of written instructions.

No internet, and no one is there to help him. Andrew, under these conditions, can make what Anna Wintour and I would agree is a high-quality shirt. Well, I am extremely passionate about shirts, so I can at least get Andrew started with a couple of baseline instructions. First of all, buttons. No plastic buttons.

We want to use warm horn buttons or something similar, something nicer than plastic. Another point we could mention is that the shirt should be made of really high-quality cloth. Wait, we're already moving too fast. What does high-quality cloth mean?

I said this would be a quick example, so we're not going to worry about that right now—just Italian cloth. Oh, and you know what? This will help Andrew a ton. Instead of a regular collar like this, we'll put a button only on the back of the collar, so it's not poking out the front. It will sit neatly in the back, ensuring it always looks perfect, but it won't resemble a button-down collar. That will make a great shirt.

Can Andrew still make a bad shirt with those directions? Obviously, yes. Andrew is absolutely going to mess up that shirt. If he has no experience and he's just in there trying to make a shirt, those directions are not enough. Danny just said, "Yeah, forget you, Andrew."

But to be fair to him, I only gave Andrew a handful of instructions. Would it be better if I provided Andrew with a comprehensive set of directions, like a Nancy Drew book's worth of guidance? Would he then be able to make a quality shirt for sure? Nope. What I just described is a technical manual, and technical manuals have never helped anyone create quality work. You cannot perform a well-executed surgery based solely on a technical manual.

You cannot write a great novel based on a technical manual, and Andrew could not. This poor Andrew couldn't even paint a room properly—like the kind of paint job that would require hiring a professional painting company. Andrew could not achieve that based on instructions alone. If you brought in a professional painter to examine Andrew's work after he followed every direction to the best of his ability, the professional painter would look at him and say, "It's alright." He would not say, "Wow, what a beautiful job on this room. Brilliant."

Many fast fashion companies—are we even talking about fashion anymore?—often try to get away with using this shallow level of thinking to prove that they are high quality in some dubious way. Do you remember back in 2012 when everyone wanted to dress like a lumberjack? All the cool guys were discussing oddly specific details about denim on the internet. As a result, many companies emerged, loudly proclaiming that their denim contained selvedge.

Most guys don't even understand what selvedge is. Most people don't really care what selvedge is; they just know that all of the dorks online who talk about denim constantly are always using this word "selvedge," so I guess Uniqlo jeans are great! We can be smart-alecks about this all we want, but at the end of the day, I think we all know in our hearts that the presence of selvedge does not make a pair of jeans high quality. In fact, there are a lot of jeans with selvedge that are of low quality.

So, if you're wondering, this episode took me months to write. There are multiple books that I had to read to research for this, and like nine fashion weeks' worth of information just bouncing around in my head. Daniela and I are able to take time to read books in order to prepare for episodes or go to fashion week because this is our full-time job. It is our full-time job for both of us. Frankly, if you want what I consider to be the best fashion coverage in the entire industry to continue, we need financial support, specifically through Patreon.

You get a ton of perks, such as extra videos and extended videos of the Margiela series that we did a while back, full-length interviews with designers that we'll discuss in this very video, and a special series where I take you through the stories and details behind literally every article of clothing that I own. We had to split those episodes up into multiple installments just for categories like coats or shirts. This wasn't because I own an enormous number of clothes, but because there was so much to talk about with each item. I really take my time with this. When we started the Patreon, there was kind of this unspoken agreement between us and our audience at large, which was that if we had enough to pay a salary for both of us and a small business budget...

We will produce the best fashion coverage we are capable of creating. I feel that we have fulfilled our end of the deal on that. As our goals continue to grow and expand, most of those goals revolving around quality, we need your support. If you find value in this, all I'm asking is that you invest that value back into the channel. Okay, so the technical manual plan does not work at all for creating quality content, right?

We're going to put a pin in that for now, because we need to tackle some myths about quality. This is going to be the main focus of the episode. Please bear with me; this is extremely important.

It's going to involve a lot of specifics, but it is very important. Then we will move on to the thesis and the goal of this episode. Shifting gears fully: if you have been deeply interested in clothing for a long time, at some point, someone—your partner, your parents, your friends—has probably asked you, "Why do you care about this stuff so much? Also, why is it so expensive?"

I could just get that from Primark. Have you seen it, Primark? They have good stuff now. Oh, and huge disclaimer time: I am by no means saying that people who need clothes for a job interview or need to clothe their children while they are in a time of financial crisis should have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for things.

The audience of this channel consists mostly of fashion hobbyists. These are people who buy clothes because it is their hobby. Any guilt-tripping about fast fashion is directed at those individuals. I am not referring to people who are experiencing financial crises. So, this question arises: Why are you so into this stuff?

That's a completely reasonable question to ask because to a guy who just wants to get wings with his friends and watch sports, fashion must seem like either something for complete idiots or for someone who desperately needs to prove they're rich to people. So to that question, I think many of us have said that the reason we're into this is that our clothes are of higher quality, which means they last longer, look better, and are made more sustainably. Boom! Argument finished! Morning, bud!

Silencio! No photo! No photo! It is 11:47. It is 11:47.

Good morning. Barely. Don't make this into a bid. I look terrible.

Don't worry, I absolutely won't use this footage, no matter what. Please don't use this footage. This won't be in the video. Please don't use this footage. Sponsored by Ricola.

Ricola has paid me zero money. Forget Ricola. Now, to address the question: Why am I so into fashion? Why even pursue this?

We would say that our clothes are high quality, which means that they last longer, look better, and are made more sustainably. However, that statement only holds true if you don't look into it closely. The closer truth is that not all of that is actually accurate. It's complicated.

Let's get into it. Let's address "lasts longer" first, because this has got to be the most common point that people cite. The idea makes perfect sense on paper. If you keep buying $20 shirts and they keep ripping, getting musty, or losing their shape, and you have to keep replacing them, the person who buys one $100 shirt gets to enjoy a nicer shirt, has that shirt for a longer period, and eventually saves money in the long run. It’s a popular argument because there isn’t an easy counter for it.

But we're now going to talk about how that is essentially not true at all. The reality is that in the last century, humans have created an enormous amount of innovations that have made individual lives a little bit better for many people. You know those ketchup bottles where the opening is on the bottom rather than just being a normal jar? That is a simple, awesome idea. It's not saving any lives, but it is a tiny, minuscule detail that makes many people's lives a lot simpler.

There have been so many innovations like this, and clothing is one of the biggest beneficiaries of these innovations. The most obvious quality-of-life improvement to clothing that I can think of that has happened in the last hundred years is polyester thread. Polyester thread is much stronger than cotton thread. What does this do? It prevents seams from popping.

And I mean, I guess seams can still pop, but in a lot of cases, those seams are just unbelievably strong in comparison to natural fiber threads, simply because they are made of plastic. Just to give you an idea, if you're under the age of 40, every garment you’ve ever owned has been made of polyester thread. Don't forget, we're discussing the myth that expensive clothes last longer. Talking about whether a t-shirt lasts longer is a difficult thing to address, especially considering the use of polyester thread.

I cannot, in good conscience, tell you that a $200 designer t-shirt is going to last longer than a Kirkland Signature t-shirt. Both are made using polyester thread. Sure, the seams may not pop as easily, but what else? They don’t stain as much?

That's not true. If both t-shirts are cotton, or at least if they're both made of the same material, they will generally be equally susceptible to stains. Perhaps we could determine this by how long they hold their color. However, that approach isn't very effective because faded clothes are, first of all, very trendy right now. Secondly, the color fastness aspect tends to be more significant when using low-quality dyes.

The items that are made really well are probably going to lose their color faster because they are more likely to use natural dyes. Oh, but wait, pilling, right? I keep hearing about this thing on TikTok regarding pilling—specifically, the difference between long staple and short staple fibers. You need to look for long staple fibers because they are longer. So, I'm not criticizing anyone who is discussing pilling online.

That is true. Find me two companies that will let you know whether they use short staple or long staple cotton. And for that matter, do you know what qualifies as long staple cotton? I don't. Do you?

Very few brands will even list that they're using long-staple cotton. If they do, frankly, I start thinking that we're getting into the salvage problem all over again, and I become deeply distrustful of that company. If you have information where you're like, "Oh, actually, the definition of long-staple is this," please put that in the comments. I love being corrected.

My point here is that when you start going down the list, you think, “Aha, that’s it! That’s where the quality is.” However, you then open up three or four more complicating factors that also need to be explored. Once you get those sorted, there’s another layer of additional complexities beneath that. It just keeps going. Again, if you have something to add that can help people find better quality clothes, please put it in the comments. But we're going to move on. If a shirt lasts longer, it's probably just because you're taking better care of it since you paid a lot of money for it.

I still hand wash all of my t-shirts, including my undershirts and other items. This one just dried. Washing machines are meant for socks and underwear only. Moving on to the second designer clothing myth: designer clothes make you look better. This myth is more complicated than the first, but thankfully, it's a bit more objective.

The clothes that damn flashes look incredible because the pattern is so complicated. That's why they have to charge so much—because the pattern is so complicated. Great skit! In reality, this is sort of true. Tim Robinson's character here is using the word "pattern" to refer to the design, like all the tubes and pipes on his shirt, along with all the colors.

That is not what "pattern" actually means in the fashion industry. That's a graphic. A pattern refers to the pieces that are used to build a garment. They are the flat pieces that are shaped to bring form to the final product. The separate pieces of an article of clothing are all individually measured and cut, and then they must be sewn together.

Centimeters that are added or subtracted from any of these lines or curves will impact the way the final garment fits. There are as many ways to design a pattern as there are people. The possibilities for creating a coat, a shirt, or pants are infinite. The greatest fashion designer who has ever lived, your favorite fashion designer, would say that much of the magic for a beautiful piece of clothing comes from its pattern design. So yes, if a pattern is legitimately very complicated and non-standard, that would make the garment much more expensive.

A pretty simple example here is the Mursby Schwanen T-shirts, the ones that the guy from "The Bear" wears. For some of their shirts, they feature a triangle pattern piece at the bottom of the armpit. This design allows for a lot more freedom of movement while still maintaining a tight and high armhole. There are brands whose fame comes primarily from excellent and unique pattern cutting, such as Rick Owens. They are not just designing for the runway; they manufacture nearly everything that you see in these shows. The needs of the pattern cutting team at Rick Owens are much more expensive than those at Kirkland Signature headquarters.

And that unique pattern cutting is one of the major factors in making clothing look different on the wearer to an observer and feel different to the person putting it on. There's a lightweight coat that I own that has no zippers, no buttons, and no toggles. There are really no fastenings or finishings at all. But when you close the coat, it holds itself together, literally just using gravity and the weight of itself. So we found it.

What makes expensive clothes higher quality? Not at all. There are two big caveats here. I'm just going to keep showing you footage of Rick here because I don't want to show bad examples of pattern cutting, as I'm not trying to call anyone out. Okay, so the idea that really advanced pattern cutting makes you look better in the clothes and makes expensive clothes worth it is a misconception.

That is not true. The first caveat to that is that anyone can try to do crazy pattern cuts. In fact, the number one problem I see with young designers is that they attempt to create elaborate pattern cuts without fully understanding the technique. When I am asked for advice, I always pose a question back to young designers. I ask, if you only had measuring instruments, physical drafting paper, and another person, could you take that person's measurements and make a physical pattern from scratch—not based on another pattern, but entirely from scratch—for a three-piece suit that fits them perfectly?

No frills, nothing crazy—just a plain, perfectly fitting suit. If you can't achieve that, we may not need to wait for the triple-zip hooded parka with deconstructed shoulder outserts. Innovative pattern cutting is often what makes great clothes exceptional, but complex pattern design can also lead to truly terrible garments. The second big caveat here is that unless this garment is bespoke—which is rare these days—it probably won't fit you properly. It can have the best, most advanced, crazy, and innovative pattern cutting in the world, but it will still be based on a standardized sizing system.

Unless you are a perfect small, medium, large, XL, or XXL, it isn't going to look right on you. This fact is what brings most expensive clothes down to the same level as Primark clothes. They all come in standardized sizing. It does not matter if you are a US size medium, an Italian 50, a Japanese 17, or an Australian 600. Every metric for measuring size is not made to fit you.

It is designed to fit an approximation of you along with about 10 million other people, kind of. Personally, I am 6'2", which is 188 centimeters for our Tuba Avalon fans. That is pretty tall, but it's not unusually tall; I’m not playing in the NBA or anything. Despite being a somewhat normal size, I have struggled to find clothes that fit me my entire life. Most of the time, it just looks like I’m accidentally wearing a crop top, that I’m in high waters, or that I’m just a growing man.

Boy, I do not look better in designer clothes unless I spend a lot of time curating what I'm wearing. In fact, the easiest way for me to look good all the time would be to shop at one of the fast fashion places that offers big and tall sizing. And of course, the response to this all the time is to just get it tailored, right? I'm sure everyone has seen this on Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, and everywhere else.

It's like, "Oh, you should get your clothes tailored, bro." I love getting my clothes tailored. I get most of my clothes tailored. I buy my tailor a Christmas gift. It's incredible!

They do an excellent job tailoring my clothes. The reality is that most tailors in the United States don't know what they're doing. I love my tailor. I get most of my clothes tailored, and I am very pleased with the results. I had to deal with a lot of clothes that were botched by different tailors who didn’t know what they were doing before I found someone who could do it correctly.

"Go get it tailored" sounds great as a Reddit comment, but in the real world, it's much more complicated than that. It won't be the final solution to the quality problem. The sure-fire way for any piece of clothing, whether it's fast fashion or a very expensive item, to look better on you is luck. Is anyone noticing a pattern here? Designer clothes tend to look better on people than fast fashion garbage.

There are people who look bad in designer clothes and people who look great in fast fashion clothes, but I think generally all of us do, especially those of us who actually keep up with fashion. We understand that people tend to look better in designer clothes. Why? Where is the quality? Where is it being held?

How can I explain it so that we can consistently make it happen in subsequent clothing? Why can't I actually find where it's located? This reminds me of that conversation that feels like a fun little brain exercise but has no answer—it's like asking where in the human body the soul is located. You’re just never going to find a satisfying answer to that question. Moving on.

We are done with those first two myths. The third myth is that expensive clothes are, at the very least, more trendy. Designer clothing, after all, is the pinnacle of fashion. If you splurge and spend a significant amount at Dolce & Gabbana, you might think it’s the only way to ensure that your clothes are truly in style. This myth is often discussed in relation to how the latest and greatest styles debut on fashion runways, then make their way to mid-range stores a couple of years later, and finally find their way into fast fashion retailers, ending up on clearance racks before the cycle starts all over again.

No, no, wait, that is true: bliss. I thought about the scene in *The Devil Wears Prada* that discusses cerulean belts. You think this has nothing to do with you, bliss? You go to your closet and select that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, and you're trying to tell the—yes, that system that Barbra Streisand describes in that scene used to be true, but it's not even slightly true now. Unfortunately, fast fashion has gotten really, really good at stealing.

For well over a decade, fast fashion brands have been continuously imitating runway designs. The CEO of Fashion Nova stated that he can create a sample within 24 hours of conceptualizing a new garment, and have it ready for sale on the website within two weeks. This means that, when a design premieres on the runway and is widely shared on Instagram, Zara can have a replica displayed in their store within two weeks—before the original brand even begins manufacturing, which typically takes around six months.

Months. By the time the real one is actually on sale, Zara has already cleared it. The cycle is complete. That is frustrating, obviously, but what's even worse is that many fashion companies, especially those in the runway sector, don't even trust their own designers to create. A lot of these major companies that are hosting runway shows in Paris, Milan, New York, and London are relying on companies and services known as trend forecasters.

I'll save you the lengthy explanation. We delved into trend forecasting networks in a significant way in this episode. Essentially, trend forecasting networks gather vast amounts of information and compile it into digestible insights that they can provide to fashion companies, their clients, to inform them about what their collections should look like. They can be as specific as you want; if you're looking for general trends, for example, they can tell you what will be popular in a few years.

If you want to know about a color palette that you should use to make your design look modern, they will provide you with the entire color palette. They'll inform you of everything you need. If you're curious about finishing details, such as pockets—like what cool pockets for jeans are in style now—they can get as specific as you want.

That old idea that many of us romanticize in our minds—of the genius designer who locks themselves away to work alone, only to emerge and say, "I present to the world, this is the new look"—is mostly gone. Or, if it's not gone, we, as the audience, have no way of knowing who is doing that, who isn't, or who is perhaps halfway doing it. One luxury brand might have trend forecasters design their entire collection from top to bottom, while another might only use trend forecasters for their color palette.

Another might say, "Oh, well, of course we give our design team complete creative freedom for their runway collections, but once it's time to turn that collection into product, we, of course, consult our trend forecasting agency." I don't want to just flippantly act like everything is messed up. I mean, maybe none of the designers that I just showed you do that at all. Maybe none of them subscribe to WGSN or any other trend forecasting network. But if Daniela and I can't figure out which ones do, then...

The general public has no hope of doing that at all. We have been to Paris Fashion Week, and we’re about to leave for our 10th one right now. We personally are friends with many of the designers who show in Paris, and we text them when it's not work time. We have also attended the actual runway shows of many other designers.

We have no idea who's using trend forecasting networks. On to the next quality myth: luxury fashion is more sustainable. This one is pretty complicated, and I want to say something here.

I am not a scientist. As far as actual sustainability science is concerned, that is very important. You should not be looking to me, a YouTuber, for information on the science of sustainability. Science is complicated, and you should seek answers about science from scientists.

But sustainability, as an umbrella term, also refers to the treatment of the workers who are making things. This includes issues such as labor abuse. All of us are painfully aware that most of the products we buy on a day-to-day basis, which support the entirety of the Western world, are made under mostly slave labor conditions. Oh, you're okay with the washing machine? It won't be.

It won't. No. No. Thank you for asking. That's very kind of you.

The reality is we are never going to know the full story of how something is made because governments do not require companies to disclose that information. So yes, with many qualifiers, the statement that luxury fashion is more sustainable than middle market or fast fashion is true to some extent. However, it is also very complicated and has a lot of nuances. While this is the most accurate of all the myths, I think what many people mean when they say, "Oh, it's really high quality," is something different. Certainly, I expect that if I purchase a luxury product, it was not made under slave labor conditions. However, when I'm holding something and saying, "Oh, this is super high quality," I am not referring to the labor conditions.

I'm referring to the physical properties of the object in my hand. And as for the sustainability aspect, at a minimum, it incentivizes us to buy less of it, which I guess is more sustainable because it's so incredibly expensive. Oh boy, we are not done. We are actually just getting warmed up. So if you have been playing this video in the background just for general ambiance in the room, I am so flattered by that.

But I'd like to ask for your attention for just a moment. Quality. What is it? What does that mean? In order to answer that, we've had to dispel some myths about expensive clothes versus cheap clothes.

One, expensive clothes like that? Longer? Nope, not really. At least not in a consistent way. Two, expensive clothes look better.

This is true in the comments section of a Reddit post, but in the real world, it isn't necessarily true. Firstly, expensive clothes are much trendier. No, that's not even remotely the case anymore. Secondly, expensive clothes are made more sustainably. Sort of true, but not enough to be the core selling point.

Now that we have unraveled all of these myths, we need to talk about whether or not quality is a real thing in the first place. An incredible book called *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* by Robert Pirsig might have been assigned to you in college or high school. I strongly encourage you to reread it as an adult. This book is mind-blowing.

It's somewhere between a pseudo-autobiographical novel and a philosophy text. *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* was the core text for creating this episode. Congrats to you if, like in the first few minutes of this video, you thought, "This sounds a lot like *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*." I’ll spare you the details of the wider plot of the story and the metaphysics of quality, as it is now referred to, and just focus on the core details we need. The book is about the author, Robert Pirsig, and his son, Chris, on a cross-country motorcycle trip together.

As they're going, Robert has all these essays about life, relationships, and maintaining a motorcycle. At one point, he's trying to explain to us, the audience, how to maintain a motorcycle in a super effective way so that we will achieve the same results with our motorcycles that he gets with his. However, as he gets more and more specific—similar to how we became more specific a few minutes ago—he realizes that he is not actually going to relay the information correctly to you. Even though he knows the information, he just can't present it in a way that will ensure you have a well-maintained motorcycle. This is the same problem we faced with Andrew early on in the episode.

This is such an incredible quote. I'm going to read it over some runway footage. "Quality. You know what it is, yet you don't know what it is." But that's self-contradictory.

But some things are better than others; that is, they possess more quality. However, when you attempt to define what quality is, apart from the things that already have it, it all disappears. There's nothing to discuss. Yet, if you can't articulate what quality is, how do you recognize it?

Or how do you even know it exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes, it does not exist at all. But for all practical purposes, it does exist. What else are grades based on? Why else would people pay fortunes for some things and throw other things in the trash?

Obviously, some things are better than others, but what determines this "betterness"? So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels without finding any place to gain traction. What the hell is quality? Quality has to be an abstract concept. And before you get onto Robert or onto me for being like, "Oh sure, we're taking the ethereal," kind of like, "Oh, everything is everything," that's not what this is.

If quality is not an abstract concept, then it simply becomes a checklist, and we run into the salvage problem once again. What makes, for example, quality eggs? Oh, free-range, right? Like cage-free or free-range. Okay, so then we end up having commercials that sound like this.

Hey fella, do you ever get tired of the bustling city life and yearn for a taste of homegrown flavor? Then try the high-quality eggs at Profit Farm Co., where we have technically met the FDA pre-regulation requisites to legally call our eggs free-range. You should look up what the actual legal definition of free-range is sometime. It's pretty funny.

So yeah, you want selvage denim? We’ve got selvage denim, buddy. You want raw denim? Uh-oh, these are raw right here. You want loop-wheeled?

We got them for $4.99, buddy. And I know that now, especially at this point in the episode, it is very tempting to just say, "Dude, forget this. Everything is a scam. Nothing means anything. Every fashion brand sucks."

I'm just going to buy three Uniqlo outfits every year, and then I'm not going to think about it anymore. That probably would be the right response unless we can adapt our idea of quality. The definition that we've been using for quality has never helped us, even though we felt like it was. The only thing that produces quality is care.

The person who made your shirt needs to feel that they have done good work in creating it. In order to reach that place, the designer must be willing to invest both time and money to understand what their own satisfaction should look like. The satisfaction of the maker is what you and I, as purchasers, need to seek. We have a lot more to cover here, but I just want to quickly mention that this episode has mostly presented bad news. The internet is often set up for browsing platforms like TikTok or YouTube, where you can come across a video that discusses topics like how straight seams are or how the panels are shaped on a blouse, and you might think, "Great, good to know."

And then you aren't able to use that information the next time you go to The Gap. I'm sorry that I can't give you an easy answer to this, but frankly, if you're giving me your time, I respect you enough not to lie to you. I've been a fashion critic for five years, and Daniela has been a fashion critic for about three years. Yeah.

We have been to nine Paris Fashion Weeks, and we are going to our 10th in a couple of days. It's very exciting! Over the course of our careers, we have unfortunately encountered a few brands that we thought were totally untouchable, brands we loved before. However, when you get in the room with the actual product—everything, not just what you might buy at Saks or the one item you have from them—you realize that it’s mostly subpar. For me, that experience was so unsettling that I was still shaken by it weeks later after I had encountered it for the first time.

But over the course of our fashion journey, we have found a few brands that we think demonstrate extremely high quality, at least as far as what we've been able to observe. We're going to talk about a few briefly here. Those brands are Jeffrey B. Small, Yanyan Vanessa, and Hermès. We have encountered other companies that demonstrate very high quality, but we're going to stick to those three examples because they operate so differently as businesses.

We have had the pleasure of spending a great deal of time in Jeffrey B. Small's workroom in Italy, documenting it thoroughly through footage and interviews. I own a vintage pair of trousers by GBS and a suit from his Evolution 9 collection, which is from last season. We have interviewed Yanyan Vanessa more times than any other designer on this channel. We have visited his atelier, and I own about ten pieces of clothing by him, most of which are t-shirts.

To Hermes' runway shows and showrooms every Paris Fashion Week, Daniela and I have a small collection of their accessories, which mainly consists of scarves, various silk pieces, and interesting little pieces of hardware. I mention this to provide context for my qualifications when discussing the quality of these brands. Okay, in no particular order, let's start with GBS. Jeffrey has a couple of dozen employees who work in his "super workroom," as he calls it, in Italy, under his direct supervision.

From what I have observed, it seems that the goal of this company is to create the highest quality clothes possible. It's similar to the maze I was describing to you regarding long staple and short staple. What's the definition of long staple? Does that cause any other problems? What are those problems?

Okay, what are the details of those problems? How can you fix those problems? Oh, we've found more problems. That whole thing — his goal is to get as far down into that ocean as he possibly can. When I interviewed Jeffrey, he often spent 10 minutes talking about a single piece of clothing.

And speaking of those specs, every article of clothing he sells comes with more information and details concerning that item than I thought there were details to be known. Jeffrey has personally vetted and works very closely with mostly local suppliers who create what he considers to truly be the best zippers in the world, the best cashmere in the world, the best buttons in the world, the best thread in the world, and so on. The last thing is that he recently told me that in 2023, they produced about 1,000 to 8,800 articles of clothing in total. I don't think you need an NBA to understand that this is an extremely small number of items. If you're immediately interested in that, I have two very long-form interviews with Jeffrey and a huge project coming later in the future.

Yanyan Vanessa is a small company, but the difference is that they work with suppliers all over the world. If Jeffrey is at the pinnacle of small-batch artisanal work, Yanyan and his business and life partner, Pietro, represent the highest quality clothing that can be made through manufacturing. These clothes are not usually made in the physical presence of Yanyan or Pietro, but the sheer volume of efforts they undertake to ensure their goals are met is truly remarkable. When I visited their studio in Antwerp, Yanyan shared with me his philosophy of pattern cutting, which he refers to as openness in design.

We also got to see how their employees make all the prototypes in-house, how every day someone cooks a family meal for everyone else, and how one employee weaves a limited amount of cloth on a hand loom. That employee, named Lamine, is also one of their main house models. He looks great in everything. The garments made from the hand-woven textiles by Lamine are very limited in number and end up costing an insane amount of money. But I want you to name for me one other company—just one—that has a loom in their headquarters that is used every season to make product.

I'll wait. Anybody. Name another company. Additionally, if that interests you, we have a whole episode about Yanyan Vanessa, and we have multiple interviews on Patreon where he goes into incredible detail about each specific garment that we're discussing. Hermès is included in this list because they are a massive global company that seems to be doing things the right way.

The number one way to produce low-quality items is to do it through a gargantuan global company. However, Hermes still checks most of my boxes. Despite most people conflating the Birkin with Hermes in general, they are not just a bag company; they are an overall luxury goods company. Their standard of quality for all the products across various categories is, frankly, incredible. How do I know that?

Because every time I go into an Hermès store, whether I'm touching a blanket or a wooden display box, I touch these items and think, "Oh damn, I do that a lot." Again, it's not just a bag brand, but most of the reporting about this company has focused on the bags, so we’ll talk about that. A Birkin, for example, is made from beginning to end by the same artisan. It usually takes about 18 work hours to create one. And those employees, we are told, are usually not allowed to make quota bags until they have been with the company for a number of years.

And those artisans are not just working elsewhere in the world. Hermès employs, like their employees, 6,000 artisans. Six thousand people are creating objects at Hermès in France. They source materials from other places, but 6,000 people are actively making things in France.

Beyond little factoids about the brand, I regularly see products there that you can't find anywhere else, at least not that I've seen. This is a leather top with an insane amount of ostrich feathers on it. It is stunningly beautiful. They only use leather that hasn't been grain corrected, and that leather is generously used in the most luxurious men's outerwear that I've ever felt in my life. Oh, whoops, actually...

Wait, I'm getting back to checking boxes and stuff. It must be ostrich feather and non-grain corrected leather. You get my point, though. Speaking of listing things, that brings us to our next point. I don't have a way of knowing—I guess I do have a way, but I do not know what the best cashmere in the world is supposed to feel and look like.

If you were to sit me down and conduct a blind test between the greatest, objectively the highest quality cashmere in the world, and then the ninth best cashmere in the world, I would probably tell you that they feel about the same. However, I spent two full weeks shadowing Jeffrey everywhere except the shower, and that man is obsessed with cashmere. He knows what the best cashmere is, what the best thread is, and he can tell the difference between half a centimeter here and there. I may not be able to discern those differences, but Jeffrey absolutely does. So, if you were to ask me why Jeffrey's clothes are of such high quality, the answer is that I trust him.

The Hermès Calvi is so important. I mean, looking at it here, is the quality just jumping off your phone screen at you? It's not. And there's nothing crazy happening here while I hold it either. The big deal about the Hermès Calvi is that I trust Hermès.

The person who selected the leather, the person who cut and built it, the person who performed quality assurance, the person who packaged it, and the person who sells it—all of those individuals care a lot about that wallet. I trust them. It's all about care. The person making something has to care. And this poses, by the way, a huge problem because I'm a fashion critic.

Daniella and I travel around the world. Both of us are fashion critics. We explore different cultures and learn as much as we can about fashion so that we can bring you insights in an entertaining and informative way. I hope there is trust between us when I make a recommendation. You trust that I truly believe what I'm saying, and if I say something is good, I hope you will trust me.

But my saying, "I trust this designer the most for you," is secondhand trust. There are countless brands that you may want to know if you should trust or not, and we just haven't covered them before. Those are real issues, and I'm not sure what to tell you about that. Perhaps, and I'm really just speculating here, the idea of quality needs to be discussed further.

Maybe, and I really don't know here. I'm just kind of throwing ideas out. Perhaps the concept of quality has to become something that the customer engages with too. I'm not just going to do one Google search or one Reddit search to figure out what jeans I should buy. I'm going to take an active, participatory role in understanding what quality even means in terms of jeans.

Maybe that involves learning about textiles. Perhaps it involves understanding how anything is made. A quality decision when purchasing a product means that we are holistic and knowledgeable about what we're doing. I know that this may be a frustrating answer, especially if you have a wedding coming up this weekend and just need a suit.

But again, I don't feel comfortable sitting up here and lying to you. I think this is the truth. I've thought a lot about this. Danny is so sick of hearing about the quality issue. I've been reflecting on this for a long time.

This is all I can come up with. This is kind of a footnote, but I do feel like we should make it clear here. If you like fashion, you do not need a practical reason for why you like it. I mean, gamers are not out here claiming that playing five hours of League of Legends every day improves your cognitive ability or something. If you are looking for permission, I will give it to you now.

You do not need your parents to approve of this. You do not need your friends to approve of this. You don't need your partner to approve of this, frankly.

You need to accept that you can like something. You're allowed to like something for subjective reasons. The research I just suggested is not a prerequisite for enjoying something. I find that this is especially difficult for men. They feel like they need to justify their interest in clothes to their buddies, whose only interests are re-watching "Breaking Bad" and smoking weed.

I have no idea why we need to justify it to that guy, but I see a lot of people trying to do this. I have to give a gargantuan shout-out to Rob—Robert Pirsig, the late Robert Pirsig—for writing *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*. If you haven’t read that, you really need to. Also, shout-out to Jimmy Barker, who was the person who introduced me to that book when I was literally interviewing him during our second Paris Fashion Week ever.

Okay. If you finished the episode, you're at this point. I appreciate you so much. You are the best. Go watch a full-length interview with Jeffrey B.

Smaller, Jan Jan, Vanessa on the Patreon. They are phenomenal. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.

All good? Okay.