Fabric is the most important part of any garment, Ben Kriz writes.Illustration by Lauren Tamaki
I spend a good part of my working life around clothes – writing about them, handling them, occasionally buying more of them than I probably should. A lot of that work happens online, and I spend plenty of time looking at garments on screens: product pages, runway photos, Instagram posts. Flattened into two dimensions, it’s easy to see the colour, the cut and the styling. What you can’t really see is the weight, the texture or the way the cloth moves.
This is a problem because, in my experience, the most important part of a garment is the fabric. It seems obvious that it should factor into buying clothing, but today, people are often more interested in the trend, the brand name or who stars in the campaign. I’m certainly not immune to those things but, in 2019, I started working at Harry Rosen’s head office and my perspective started to shift. Being around fine men’s tailoring every day was an informal education in material. The weight of a suit cloth. The density of a knit. The way certain fabrics drape while others hold their structure.
Take a favourite shirt. The label might say cotton, but that can mean many different things. It might be Pima cotton, an extra-long fibre known for its softness, or the far rarer Sea Island cotton, grown in tiny quantities in the Caribbean and prized by shirt makers. More often it’s the workhorse upland cotton, woven into poplin, Oxford cloth or jersey. Same fibre, completely different experience on the body.
Wool is the same story. I have close friends getting married this summer, and the group chat is already talking suits. A few of the guys are scoffing at the idea of wool in August, but I’m planning to wear a loosely woven tropical wool suit in the kind of cloth you can almost see through. Its open weave lets air move through the fabric, so even in late August, it breathes beautifully.
Once you start putting fabric first, your priorities change. Logos lose some of their pull, and the hunt becomes less about what’s new and more about finding the right version of something familiar: a good Oxford cloth button-down, a French work jacket in the right weight of twill, a sweater that will soften rather than sag after a few winters.
It’s also changed how I shop online. Buying a sweater from the info on a product page will always involve a bit of guesswork but knowing what to look for helps. Fibre composition is the obvious place to start. Sometimes, I’ll see a jacket at a great price, only to look closer and realize the “wool” is blended with nylon, which explains the bargain. Every blend isn’t bad, of course. A little nylon in a sweater can add durability. Technical weather-resistant jackets rely on synthetics for good reason.
Weight can also be revealing, though not every brand lists it. Zooming in on the photos and any videos of a model moving in a garment can help you imagine how it might feel on your own body. Even the product description and words like “slubby,” “breathable” or “crisp” can offer clues. None of it replaces handling the garment in person, but over time, you learn to read between the lines.
Understanding fabric also means realizing good materials aren’t always defined by price. Good materials appear everywhere if you know what to look for. Vintage garments often use exceptional fabrics. Learning how to find them online is a rite of passage for a frequent shopper (search “Made in Scotland” on your next hunt for a beautiful cashmere sweater). Even today’s mall brands occasionally get it right. One of the best pairs of jeans I own, I bought last fall at Gap.
As shoppers grow fatigued with disposable clothing, interest in natural fibres is creeping back. Vintage continues to boom. Influencers post “100 per cent natural fibre” clothing hauls and share lists of brands making garments the way they once were. Trends will come and go, silhouettes will swing from skinny to wide and back again. Brands come in and out of vogue. But the one thing that never really goes out of style is a well-made garment, and that always begins with good fabric.
