Call Me Picky ....

.... I don't mind. Or you could just call me a seasoned shopper. And having done many years of shopping, you learn a little (or a lot) along the way. Maybe you already do some of these things and then again, you might not but hey ho, for the record, this is what I look for when I'm looking at a potential new addition to the wardrobe. Oh yes and a warning. This is a rather long & rambly read. You can switch off now if you like and come back another day.

Pattern Matching.

* Checks.  

Let's start with checks. This might not bug some people but if I wore this and stood in front of the mirror and the middle stripe was not running central - it would irritate the hell out of me. It's not out by much but honestly, I couldn't wear it and keep a sane head. This is one of those tops that I couldn't buy online if I liked it because I would need to see first hand how the checks marry up. Anal. I know.

Photo Credit : Zara

* Stripes. 

What about stripes? Like many of you out there, I'm a stripy top kind of girl. Before buying anything stripy, I painstakingly look for pattern matches along the seams. Stripes which do not match say cheap. End of. Here's my CDG Play tee - expensive for a cotton jersey tee but I feel justified when I look at details such as how the centre of the neckline hits the blue stripe on the tee and is perfectly symmetrical on both sides. 

How pristine is the sewing on the neckline?

See the perfectly matched side seams? 

Side seams all neat and aligned.

See how both cuffs end on the white stripe perfectly? I have seen stripy sleeves where one sleeve finishes on say a blue stripe and one finishes on a white stripe. Bad. Very bad. And you don't always have to pay a lot to get a garment with perfect stripe alignment. You can pay under £10 and still get perfect stripes. I have garments from H&M and Primark with perfect stripe matching. The ones that don't - I simply didn't buy.

Perfectly matched stripes on the cuff finish.

* Shoes. 

Shoe Patterns. This bit is something you might not have noticed before. If you look at any pair of Zara shoes on their website - you will notice that the right shoe is the mirror image of the left.

Photo Credit : Zara

This is what should really happen. The flowers on the front panel are all positioned identical but is not a mirror image.

Photo Credit : GravityPope.Com

The same piece of fabric is cut at the same point and the flowers are all positioned in the same place on the front of the Opening Ceremony loafers. It's very rare to find print shoes which are an exact mirror image - normally only the really expensive designers can afford to do that . I have put many shoes back because of the inconsistencies in the prints between the left and right shoes. Sometimes, the differences are too great to ignore (big leopard print spots on one shoe and virtually no spots on the other). Or different colours in the leather between right and left. You have been duly warned and I need to get a life.

Complimentary Stitching.

And I mean complimentary. Not contrasting. There is nothing I dislike more than manufacturers who do not take care over this particular detail. You have a black and white stripy top in front of you. The last stripe on the hem is black. What do you see? A white thread running right across the black stripe. And not only that but a wonkily stitched white thread running through. Booo. Get your act together and change the cotton reel. I know there is the argument that it will add to the manufacturing costs and takes time and effort to change over the cotton and that's how they keep costs down but hey you lose sales from people like me who do look at small details like this. 

For example, I saw a grey & black stripy dress recently and I even went so far as to try it on.  However having given it another check over, I spotted the offending grey contrast thread running across the black stripe and it didn't look very good. Back it went. Instead I went to H&M and bought another one of those trusted little cotton dresses. In black and cream. And look for £7.99, you can get pattern match along the seams and black cotton stitching where it's meant to be. 

Complimentary stitching

Matching side seams.

And I checked all the size smalls available for the most perfect one I could find too. Hard core.

Fabric Content.

This is rich coming from the girl who recently brought home a 100% acrylic jumper. I'm not a qualified fabric nerd and have no qualitifications whatsoever textile based but this is what I know and might help you decide on how a garment will wear. It's also literally one of the first things I do when I pick up a garment - I look at the fabric composition. 

• Polyester is virtually crease resistant and stain resistant. Grumps threw a glass of red over me for because I said he had weird taste in music (just joking) but you get the picture ... a glass of red ended up over a polyester crepe blouse I had. It basically rejected the wine. Little droplets of wine hung on desperately but failed miserably. The blouse was saved and so was the Grumps. And it looked as good at the beginning of the night as it did by the end of it. It does not crease. How often do you put on a skirt or a pair of trousers, bend down to pick up something and stand up to find you've got whiskering across the crotch. Hmm. So polyester is okay - sometimes.

• Acrylic is an arsonist's dream. Put an iron anywhere near and it will melt. Or do so with great caution and a protective cloth at the very least. Don't you just hate it when you get that burning smell and sticky stuff on your iron? I make mistakes too. Or how else can I pass on this info. When it is not melting, it might be pilling. On a smooth garment, this is most noticeable. I picked up a school jumper for Ben in a rush thinking it was one of his usual red cotton jumpers. It wasn't - it was a red acrylic number. He wore it for two days and this is the result. Actually it looked worse than that - I've actually ironed that and flattened some of the pilling down. I don't even want to put him in it such is my aversion to pilling. The other thing to note about acrylic is it's very light so it is often used for heavy knit jumpers because the garment doesn't drag.

Hummph. Pilling makes me bad tempered.

• Viscose - hmm. Difficult one this. Sometimes it creases like a concertina and sometimes, it behaves itself. I have a dress which is made of viscose. It's very light as the fabric is thin but it is also very nice to wear especially on hot days and it doesn't actually crease that much. Put it this way, if I were to put it on a hanger at the end of the day and pick it up again the next day, I could wear it without running the iron over it again. However, I know that Helen from The Flaky Fashionista has an ivory blouse which she likes the style of but says creases terribly after a few hours. I asked her if it was viscose and she said yes. She said I was a clever clogs or words to that effect. 

• Cotton. This seems to be the holy grail of fabrics and what most people look for in their day to day garments which they want to throw on and then throw in the washing machine. Cotton allows skin to breathe. It tends to wash well but can be prone to shrinkage. I personally am rather fond of cotton knitwear because it removes the pilling problem. Hoorah! This means one less jumper to de-pill. However, if it's a close knit chunky jumper - it's likely to lose it's shape and  can drag down due to the overall weight of the garment. This is probably one of those instances where manufacturers might prefer to use an acrylic so the garment is lighter and doesn't just "hang". 

• Linen. Want to look like an expensive dish rag? Buy linen. Linen is not good for the office where you need to look smart and crease free. That's polyester's job. That's probably why so many suits have an amount of polyester woven in to help minimise the creasing. Linen is good for hot summer days as it helps keep you cool and fresh. I forget this sometimes but was reminded recently when I chose to wear a pair of old black linen trousers. Comfy or what? And linen kind of relaxes with your body heat so it "stretches" a little.  Basically you have to get over the fact that you look creased and once you can reconcile yourself with that, you will be fine. Besides, I like to think that creased linen looks a little "expensive". Oh yes - I also like linen tee shirts more than cotton ones - just a nicer looser weave and good drape.

• Silk. There is good silk and bad. You can get tissue thin silk which is of no use to man or mouse and will not conceal your bra. They feel flimsy and crease a little more. A sightly thicker silk tends to "spring back" a little. And hides your bra. I hear Uniqlo do a good line in silk shirts. One thing to note, I have silk shirts which are more than 10 years old from Jigsaw. They have washed well but on my navy shirt, there is a kind of patina on it. I don't mind it but just making you aware that this can happen on darker silks (especially if you shove them in the washing machine). 

Shirt is much darker in real life. See the patina?

• Wool - Cashmere. Lovely stuff to wear and a personal favourite. But I don't wear expensive cashmere. I just wear regular supermarket cashmere or Uniqlo cashmere and that's good enough for me. I treat supermarket cashmere as I would expensive lambswool. I would rather buy cheap cashmere which usually feels ten times better than comparably priced lambswool which can be rather itchy. However let me tell you now, I have expensive cashmere which pills and I have cheap cashmere which pills. You can't tell what's going to happen. It's a bit of a lottery.

• Wool - Lambswool. My experience is that it can be a little rough and scratchy. The Grumps used to complain about it, stating a preference for something "nicer and softer". I totally get it now - sometimes he does know what he's on about. I just thought he was being a wussy fusspot. You can always wear a top underneath to alleviate any possible roughness or like me. you can just move on.

• Wool - Angora. Very soft but I find it tickles my nose when I put it on and for that reason, I don't buy it. Also it looks dreadful once it does it's funny version of wavy pilling.

• Wool - Merino. A smoother finer wool usually. My preference for a smarter jumper. My Aubin & Wills merino wool jumpers are a little thicker than what I would imagine merino to be but have worn well. I didn't like the Uniqlo merino wool jumpers I saw last winter when I was able to see some first hand in store as I found them almost a little too thin but the Gap ones this year look good (but don't slap me if they don't work out for you as I haven't actually tried any for wear and fit) but at first glance, they look great for anyone who wants smart plain knitwear.

• Wool in general. I steer clear of cable knits. They add chunk to my frame and have you ever tried de-pilling a lumpy bumpy jumper? Not possible. So I buy plain stocking stitch jumpers. Which I de-pill with a razor.

I've had enough now of that and might have missed a few others but that's what's lodged and spewed forth from my brain at the moment. Getting back on track again. 

Jeans Fading/Distressing.

So they look great on and you're admiring yourself in the mirror and then you turn round and you see the equivalent of this.

Photo Credit : H&M

Not so good eh? Very patchy.

Doesn't matter about the fit to me anymore, it's about the finish and this distressing looks far too manufactured. The white bits across your bum draws attention to the area that most people don't want attention drawing to. And as for the rest of the distressed/faded bits? Dreadful and too obvious. Let's just put them back eh?

General Finish. 

* Shoes

On shoes, if they are synthetic - you should be able to tell the difference between good synthetics and bad. I can't do with extremely plasticy looking shoes but that doesn't mean I only buy leather shoes. This patent pair looks just a little too plastic to me. There are good synthetic shoes and bad.

Photo Credit : Zara

And though these real leather boots below are lovely in styling, the finish isn't there. The buckles look a little too cheap - they need to look a little more aged and the leather looks smooth and hard. This is the kind of leather I expect to find on shoes and boots half the price of this pair. If this had been finished in a pebbled leather and the buckles were better, we might have been talking. See, you can also get good leather shoes and bad.

Photo Credit : Zara

However, these boots look much better. The grain on the leather is less smooth and definitely of a softer variety. This helps with the creasing you can get on overly smooth leather garments. I like to buy leather shoes where you can bend your your toes and the leather relaxes back without showing the creases.

Photo Credit : Zara

* Details.

I also look for even stitching and good finishing on hems for garments. I don't like tacky details like fake suede elbow patches which have been shoddily bunged on. I can ignore loose threads - you can trim those off yourself but you cannot correct wonky stitching. Pick your battles. 

Maybe I have a slightly trained eye (years of practice) but I think I know what to steer clear of in general but I also know what I can get away with in terms of how something looks. The two tone Zara jumper I featured recently is 100% acrylic but on looks and feel, you'd never know.

Affordability.

On the high street, I try to go for the best of the cheap. Even with places like H&M, you can find some good well made pieces. I particularly like their premium Trend range. The clothes cost a fraction more (we are talking H&M here so it's still peanuts in Whistles world) but the finish is a little more spot on, the fabrics tend to be a touch better and you get some nice designs which are not so mainstream. I picked up a lovely black crepe blazer from there some time back and I can't fault it on finish for the price.

When the sales come along, it's my turn to hit the biggies. I like to have a look on Net a Porter, Matches and all the places I steer away from for the rest of the year. That's when you can pick up a top or a pair of shoes for the same price as a full price regular high street item.

Anyway, I've waffled on enough now and I've bored you all to tears. Have you any tips to pass on that I haven't mentioned or might not be aware of? Or have you been caught out by any of the above?

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Last Note :

• By the way, I'm not trying to pick on Zara - its easier to illustrate with Zara images because they do lovely crisp clear images which is more than can be said for M&S whose images I don't even bother to put on here. M&S do not seem to do good quality downloadable pictures so I don't use their pics. Anybody reading from M&S - can you pass that on - it really doesn't do you any credit when anyone tries to feature one of your fuzzy pictures online and it's always prefaced with "excuse the rubbish pics but this is actually really nice in real life ....". Like I just did.

• You may have noticed that I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about pilling. Actually, make that a whole hive.

• With respect to fabric content or anything - if you love the garment - just go for it. Rules? Like they say, they are there to be "bent" a little or broken outright. Now let's go and have a look at that lovely graphic quilted 100% polyester sweatshirt from Whistles :o)