Fabric
Fabric weight tells you more about a garment than the fibre on the label
The composition tag names the raw material and stops there; the weight of the cloth is what determines how…
· 4 min read
Marta Kowalska
Editor, The Outfit Files
Marta covers fit, fabric, care & repair and the questions readers actually send in and is happiest when a piece answers the question completely.
20 articles
Fabric
Wool works because the fibre is crimped and covered in scales
Nearly everything wool does well, and the two things it does badly, come from the physical architecture of…
· 4 min read
Care & Repair
Pilling is two separate failures and only the second one is visible
The small balls on a jumper are the end of a process that began with fibre ends working loose, which is why…
· 4 min read
Care & Repair
The enzymes in ordinary detergent are why wool and silk get their own bottle
A standard laundry detergent contains biological catalysts chosen to break down specific kinds of soil, and…
· 3 min read
Wardrobe
A narrow colour range is what makes a small wardrobe look large
How many outfits a set of clothes yields depends on how many of its pieces will go with each other, and…
· 3 min read
Wardrobe
The orphan garment is the most expensive thing you own
The real cost of a piece of clothing is not what it cost but what it cost divided by the number of times…
· 3 min read
Fabric
Three basic weaves account for nearly everything you own
Plain, twill and satin are the only ways of interlacing yarn in common use, and the choice between them…
· 4 min read
Care & Repair
Pressing and ironing are different operations and one of them stretches cloth
Sliding a hot plate across fabric and setting it down on the spot do different things to the weave, and…
· 4 min read
Care & Repair
Whether a shoe can be resoled was decided before you bought it
The join between the upper and the sole is either a stitched, openable construction or a glued one, and…
· 4 min read
Wardrobe
Judging a used garment means checking the parts that cannot be replaced
Almost everything wrong with a secondhand piece is fixable except a few structural things, so the…
· 4 min read
Style History
The modern suit is a riding outfit that kept getting more formal
Everything now worn as business or formal dress started life as country clothing or informal wear, and each…
· 3 min read
Style History
Synthetic dye decided which colours ordinary people could wear
For most of history colour was an agricultural product with a price attached, and the arrival of dyes made…
· 4 min read
Fit
Pockets change the line of a garment before they hold anything
A pocket is a bag of cloth attached to a panel that was cut to hang smoothly, and how it is attached…
· 4 min read
Wardrobe
Buying clothes remotely is measurement work, not guesswork
Without a fitting room the only reliable information is numbers, and a short set of measurements taken from…
· 3 min read
Style History
The zip took forty years to be trusted with a garment
A fastener invented in the nineteenth century spent decades on boots and bags before clothing makers would…
· 3 min read
Fabric
Down insulates by holding still air in a structure that collapses when wet
The warmest insulation by weight is a natural three-dimensional cluster, and both its advantages and its…
· 4 min read
Care & Repair
How a seam is finished decides whether a garment frays itself apart
The stitching that holds two pieces of cloth together is only half the job, and what was done to the raw…
· 4 min read
Wardrobe
Climate decides a wardrobe long before taste gets a say
Humid heat, dry heat, wet cold and dry cold each impose different physical requirements, and a set of…
· 3 min read
Wardrobe
A garment in a photograph has been fitted to the camera, not to the model
Product images are produced under controlled conditions with the garment manipulated out of sight, which is…
· 3 min read
Style History
For a long stretch of history shoes were made without a left or a right
Footwear was produced on symmetrical lasts for generations, and the return of shaped pairs had more to do…
· 3 min read