Thanks, I've certainly done some of those things, but I guess I don't know enough about clothes to work with most of them. For example,
AFAIK a label showing "100% cotton" that means OK it's made of the same thing, but it could be woven cotton, stretch cotton jersey, etc. so checking the label doesn't really distinguish what it is. I don't know what else to look at other than the actual label. I've even had two pairs of identical jeans, one blue one black, where the black one stayed roughly the same size for years and the blue got bigger and bigger, so not really sure what I am looking at. The trouble is now that clothing moves on so quickly that by the time I have decided that yes I really like something or I should have got a smaller size it's too late to get another one, things are rotated as often as every 2 weeks in some places, where when I was a teen-twenties I could go back to the same shop to buy the same jeans every 3 years and they still had them. Hard to imagine now!
The other place I've come unstuck is with reputation, as most places now have several "lines" within their stores and just because their stuff has a decent reputation doesn't mean that buying another item from the same store came from a similar manufacturer or meets their reputation. and indeed I have friends who think stuff is really good cos it "lasts" and what they mean is they can wear it once every few weeks and it's still nice at the end of the season when they throw it away!
But the main time I've been bitten with this is I can't work out when additional money is spent on quality rather than name and design. They are not always things that go together, a few years ago I got sick of buying cheap clothes cos they always went bobbly and misshapen, so I spent £100 (this was some time ago when such a price was a heck of a lot) on an outfit which fell apart while I was still wearing it for the very first time. Worse than the fact it fell to bits was that, unlike the cheaper stores, this place was really huffy about accepting it back and claimed I had deliberately sabotaged it so I could wear it to a wedding and then return it for a refund, and also didn't want to refund it because it had a mark on, and actually made me go and get it dry cleaned before I could refund it! I never know looking at something if it's £30 because it's a nicer top than a £5 top or if it's £30 because it's carrying a print that costs a lot of money to license. Some of my best stuff came from a museum souvenir shop, but the manufacturer doesn't sell single items to consumers. There is a certain temptation to order a box of 50 with a personal logo on them, but maybe not...
Clothing - figuring out how much a new item with stretch when you get it home!
