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In a shop you can settle the quality question in about four seconds. You feel the weight of the fabric, tug a seam, turn a cuff inside out, and you know. Online you get none of that. You get photographs taken under studio lighting, a size chart, and copy written to sell.
So you’re reading proxies instead — the details that correlate with how a garment was actually made. The good news is that the proxies are reliable once you know which ones to look at, and that most listings give away more than the seller intends.
1. Read the fibre composition, and ignore the adjectives
“Premium cotton,” “luxury blend,” “buttery soft” — none of these mean anything. They’re not regulated and they’re not measured. The fibre composition is, because it has to be on the label by law.
What to look for depends on the garment, but a few patterns hold. In knitwear, a high proportion of natural fibre — wool, cotton, cashmere, linen — generally wears and breathes better than acrylic or polyester. In shirting, 100% cotton creases more but lasts longer than a poly-cotton blend. In anything stretchy, a small amount of elastane (2–5%) helps recovery; much more than that and the garment tends to go baggy after a few wears.
The genuinely useful signal is whether the composition is listed at all. A seller confident in their fabric puts the percentages up front. A listing that describes a jumper in three paragraphs of atmosphere without ever saying what it’s made of has told you something.
2. Fabric weight is the number that separates cheap from durable
This is the single most useful spec, and most shoppers have never heard of it.
Knits are measured in GSM — grams per square metre. A t-shirt at 120–140 GSM is thin, and you’ll see through it in daylight and through it entirely after a year. Around 180 GSM is a solid everyday weight. Over 200 GSM is a heavyweight tee, the kind that holds its shape and outlasts several cheaper ones.
Denim is measured in ounces per square yard. Around 10 oz is light and comfortable immediately; 12–14 oz is standard; anything above that is heavy raw denim that takes months to break in.
Here’s the part that makes this genuinely useful: brands that use good fabric publish the weight, and brands that don’t, don’t. If a listing tells you the GSM, that’s a small signal of confidence in itself. If you’re comparing two similar t-shirts and only one states a weight, you’ve learned something about both.
3. Zoom all the way into the photographs
Product photos are staged to flatter, but they’re still photographs of the actual garment, and at full zoom they show construction the copy will never mention.
- Stitch density. Count the stitches along a visible seam. More stitches per inch means a stronger seam that’s less likely to pucker or split. Sparse, widely spaced stitching is where cheap garments fail first.
- Pattern matching at the seams. On stripes, checks or plaid, look at where two panels meet. If the lines continue across the seam, the maker cut the fabric carefully and used more of it. If they jump, they didn’t. This is one of the most reliable quality tells there is, and it’s visible in any decent photo.
- Buttons and buttonholes. Buttons should be sewn with a visible shank or cross-stitch, not tacked flat. Buttonholes should look tightly bound rather than frayed at the corners.
- Hardware. Zips are worth a look — a branded pull (YKK, Riri, Lampo) is a genuine indicator, because good hardware costs money and brands that pay for it tend to say so.
- Linings and finishing. If there’s an interior shot, look at whether seam allowances are finished or left raw. Raw edges fray.
If a listing has only one photo, or only photos on a model at a distance, that’s its own answer. Sellers with well-made products photograph the details, because the details are what they’re charging for.
4. Use the measurements table, not the size letter
A medium means nothing across brands, and increasingly means nothing within one. The measurements table is the only fit information that’s real.
First, check which kind of table you’re reading. Some list body measurements — the size of person the garment is meant to fit. Others list garment measurements — the flat dimensions of the item itself. These are not interchangeable, and confusing them is the most common reason an online order arrives wrong.
The reliable method: find something you already own that fits the way you want, lay it flat, and measure it. Chest width pit to pit, length from the shoulder seam down, sleeve length. Then compare those numbers to the listing. It takes two minutes and it’s far more accurate than guessing at a letter.
A listing with no measurements at all is a meaningful warning sign — not just about fit, but about how much the seller knows about their own product.
5. Read the reviews for one thing only: what happened after washing
Most reviews are written the week the item arrives, when everything still looks good. They tell you about delivery speed and first impressions, which isn’t what you need.
Search the reviews for “wash,” “washed,” “shrink,” “pill,” and “after.” Those are where the useful information lives. Pilling on a knit after three wears, a colour that bleeds, a collar that goes wavy, a hem that twists — these are the failures that decide whether a garment lasts a season or five years, and they only show up in reviews written weeks later.
Customer photos are worth more than customer text, because a photo of the garment as it actually arrived, in ordinary light, is very hard to fake.
6. The return policy tells you what the seller believes
This is an underrated signal. A company that expects its products to satisfy people offers a generous window and pays return shipping. A company that expects disappointment makes returning things expensive and slow.
Check three things before ordering: how long the window is, who pays return postage, and whether returns go to a domestic address or need shipping overseas. That last one is the killer — a return that costs $40 to post to another continent isn’t a return policy, it’s a formality.
Quick red flags
- No fibre composition listed anywhere on the page
- No measurements, or only a body-size chart with no garment dimensions
- A single photo, or only distant shots on a model
- Copy heavy on adjectives and light on specifications
- Stripes or checks that visibly don’t match across a seam
- Reviews that are all five stars, all short, and all posted in the same week
- Returns at your expense to an overseas address
The bottom line
Quality online comes down to specificity. Well-made garments are sold with numbers — composition, weight, measurements, hardware brands — because those numbers are the argument for the price. Poorly made ones are sold with adjectives, because adjectives are free.
When you’re weighing two similar items, count the facts on each page. The one with more of them is usually the better garment, and that holds far more reliably than the price does.