When my mother was young, she used to tailor clothes for top leaders in the province.
This person is now the Vice Premier of the State Council, and his photo is still hanging in the window of a certain unit. At home, she could use an old Feiren sewing machine from the 1970s to make a men’s suit for my dad to wear. The collar of the suit is still as smooth as new.
Before I entered my senior year of high school, apart from socks and underwear, I also had school uniforms. I never spent a penny on clothes. Every year, classmates and their parents come to my house to learn skills, such as how to cut this skirt, how much fabric is needed for that shirt, how to hook up a sweater… all kinds of things, my mother is always there to stop them, and all the aunts come back satisfied.
The first thing my mother taught me is that the first factor in choosing clothes is not the color, not the style, not the fashion, but the material.
☞1. Good material
Good material clothes are not only a matter of wearing time, but also a matter of taste and quality.
For example, after being worn for a year, it becomes wrinkled, and even the best iron cannot flatten it. Is this kind of material any different from garbage?
Of course, times are progressing now, and new materials are emerging in an endless stream. My mother, an old tailor, used to be able to say “70%” with just a touch of her finger and open her mouth. Wool, 20% acrylic, 10% spandex” and the like have often expressed incompetence in identification in recent years.
Secondly, foreign garbage is prevalent. You can tell that a lot of foreign garbage is not made of good material. They are obviously made of real leather and fur, but they have been ravaged in every possible way and turned into a piece of cake.
This is why some clothes look pretty good when you try them on in the store, but you want to cut them into rags within a few days of wearing them home.
The material is ruined, no matter how good it looks, it’s all in vain. Good materials are the foundation of many big European and American brands, especially first-line men’s clothing.
I have a men’s shirt at home. It is simple and has no pockets. My mother said that the factory price is thousands. Generally speaking, for Chinese OEM clothing, the ex-factory price is considered good if it is 30% of the tag price.
You can think about the quality of this men’s shirt that sells for more than 3,000 yuan. Why is it so expensive?
The most expensive thing is the materials.
This light gray fabric contains silk, which shines in the sun as if the surface is covered with gold threads; the printing is embossed and three-dimensional, and you can feel the subtle sculpture feeling without touching it; the printing also has There is a red embroidery part. Only when you turn the dress over can you see that it is filled with red brocade thread.
Many girls have to say, I don’t have a tailor’s mother, how can I judge whether the material is good or not?
It’s very simple, just look at the wash label. The brand’s clothes have wash marks on the inside. The more sophisticated the logo, the better and more trustworthy the brand.
The labels of good brands are clearly written. Real first-line brands will often leave a bunch of threads of the same color and a piece of material of the same color for you to identify. Wool, cotton, chemical fiber, you will know it as soon as it is burned.
If the label of winter clothing says it contains acrylic and spandex, basically you can’t expect it to not pill – that’s impossible.
Real pure wool will not pill, but pure wool will shrink. Wool that does not shrink is not good wool. The so-called new technology that does not shrink has additives. Don’t wear it close to the body, and don’t expect to wear it for many years. Chemically treated wool is also certainly not as warm as pure wool, which shrinks.
There are also T-shirts with slippery fabrics and very elastic T-shirts, which are basically not pure cotton and will pill; if they are made of Lycra cotton, they will usually get bigger the more you wash them. After being worn for a few years, they become loose and the prints fall off easily; the top-quality Lycra elastic cotton is not bulky, but the surface is easily matted and looks old.
So don’t be greedy, don’t expect there to be any precious materials in this world that are not afraid of being ravaged.
Many girls have to say again, don’t clothes with good quality materials have no washing label?
That’s not necessarily the case. Nowadays, there are so many OEM processing factories in China with so many brands. There are many domestic brands with good quality control, but poor awareness of labeling.
For example, there is a brand in Hangzhou in the past two years, whose name I have withheld, that has been opening chain stores all over the country. The style is somewhere between European, American and Japanese styles. It follows the trend of big brands and updates quickly.
As long as you find a girl who is a little thinner, you can wear a very beautiful outfit and go out. But I have been to several of his stores and found that the washing labels are not strict. The ingredients are not labeled, the auxiliary materials are not labeled, and the ingredients of the main ingredients are only listed in large numbers. Several times I suspected that the blends were labeled incorrectly.
But what are you going to do about this? We can only learn more and accumulate experience on our own.
☞Cutting
In addition to materials, cutting is also relatively important.
On the surface, tailoring is a matter of style. In fact, tailoring is the most important test of the tailor’s patterning skills.
Some time ago, many Hanfu enthusiasts criticized the new Dream of Red Mansions. One of the important reasons was that the actors’ costumes did not have “gussets”.
This thing was used in the costumes when shooting the old Red Mansions. Simply put, it is to add a piece of interlining to the connection gap of the clothes. It can make the flat figure of Asians look plump, tall and straight immediately. , the figure is naturally beautiful.
The principle of “衽” is veryIt’s simple, but it tests your tailoring skills. How big and thick they are, what shape they are, and where they are attached are all very particular.
Modern clothing cutting has a unified model, which is what my mother did back then, and was later handed over to the assembly line workshop for production, so you basically don’t expect the workshop workers to know how to cut.
My mother’s factory back then was like this:
After receiving an external order, the foreign party would send a sample.
My mother is responsible for cutting out the front piece, back piece, neckline, sleeves, etc. from soft kraft cardboard without leaving the original piece, and draws a segmentation diagram, marking S, M, L, For XL size, this work usually takes a day or two, and then a complete replica is made using cardboard.
The workshop followed my mother’s procedures and made batch copies step by step.
If there is a problem with the material or cut of a piece of clothing, it will be fatal.
Good clothes often become useless. For people who buy clothes, the materials can still be seen, touched, and selected, but if they are not cut correctly, they will be unable to do anything.
I often see girl A wearing a skirt, which is thin, long, and so beautiful. Girl B feels that they have similar styles to girl A, so they wear it too. Why does it look so awkward when she wears it? It’s because the tailoring doesn’t suit Girl B’s body details, and the smallest detail makes a huge difference.
The most useful thing to choose when choosing a cut is jeans. When you get a pair of jeans, in addition to the size and pant shape, the most important thing is to check the back of the buttocks and whether it covers the buttocks.
The method is to hold two sections of the waistband of the pants with both hands and spread them with your fingers so that the waistband of the pants is completely barrel-shaped – if the back pocket of the pants is flat, you should not buy it. The back is round, and the wiring is flat, smooth and slightly slanted. These are good pants. They have a butt lift effect when worn, and they are not easy to wear when squatting down.
There is nothing to say about the cutting of tops, everyone is an expert. I really care about whether a piece of clothing is turned inside out, whether the joints inside are well made, and whether the edges are neatly wrapped.
No matter how beautiful they are, I will not buy those clothes that are unlined, have burrs and thorns on the inside, and have crooked threads. Without lining, it means it has no shape, and it will become rubbish after only a short time of wearing.
However, I have bought many beautiful coats in the past few years. The material is compact and a bit heavy to wear. They are not lined, but they are quite good.
I feel like my friends now have more clothes. I only wear one coat for one week every year. If I don’t wait for it to get out of shape and buy something new, I won’t discuss this list. Student parties should save more money and buy one good item without mercy, which is worth 20 pieces of bad stuff. This is my sincere advice.
Another detail to appraise the workmanship is the buttonholes.
Whether it is a top or trousers, first look at the buttonholes. The ones with a pointed end and a rounded end are sewn together and look like a horizontal thumbtack. They must be big. Shipped from regular processing factories.
Because that kind of round stitching requires a special machine, one costs 50,000 yuan, and most small garment factories are not willing to buy it. If both ends are pointed but the seams are tight, the product should be OK. If the buttonholes are full of bits of hair and the sewing is messy, then…
☞Color
Finally, let’s talk about color. The color system that suits everyone is different. , but they will also encounter the problem of clothes fading. There are many life tips on the Internet, such as adding salt to soak, etc., which are all auxiliary.
Faded clothes will still fade no matter how you handle them. It should be noted that these are clothes made of real pure cotton, and it is normal for colors to fade. Adding chemical fibers, which are petrochemical by-products, will prevent the color from fading.
Of course, if it has been chemically treated before leaving the factory, the discoloration can be greatly reduced, but according to my mother’s teachings, please try to avoid wearing this type of clothes close to the body.
I just want to say here, don’t take colorfastness as a criterion to measure the quality of clothes, unless you know the material and dyeing technology very well. Thanks.
