What is quality in fashion?

Quality is an accepted standard for everything, whether it is a product, a material, or a relation between people. In the case of the textile and fashion industry, quality refers most often to material and product, production, and the overall business philosophy.

Product quality

In today’s competitive global economy, product quality has emerged as a crucial factor. But because it has varied connotations for consumers and producers, the phrase is hard to define. Quality is typically described as the whole of a product’s attributes, including its appearance, intended use, performance, internal material interactions, consistency between identical products, and lack of design or material defects. Remember that fabric quality is simply one aspect of product quality. Cloth quality refers to the fabric used to make the product. Product quality is also influenced by other aspects such as design and construction. What is more, a quality product is defined by its end users. Expensive brands (Gucci, Chanel) – a quality product looks the way it conveys your status

Less exp brands (Nike, Tommy Hilfiger) – a quality product is functional, it does well what it is supposed to do, for example running shoes.  More recently, sustainability of clothing items has become an important indicator of quality.

Source: Image by Freepik

Production quality

Quality control happens on all levels of apparel production – from research and design, through manufacturing, and retail. Who takes part in it?

People who work for the brand,

people in factory (development / production) – especially in large fashion brands who order large quantities of items in factories (usually in Asia) – They check if the design is possible to be manufactured, if the material is comfortable and good for the skin, they check the technical things such as stitching, labels, inspect the material,

people in retail stores inspect the end-customer product, get customer feedback

Quality should not be referred to only as inspection and control. It is an attitude of perfecting each step of the production so that minimal inspection is needed.

Quality as a business approach

From a broad point of view, quality in fashion may be seen as an approach focused on enhancing quality within the entire design, production and retail process. It can mean perfecting the design, the fabric sourcing, manufacture, shipping, retail and customer service. In this sense quality comes close to sustainability as it refers not only to the product but also to people and the environment. In today’s market, fashion companies which strive for quality must consider natural resource efficiency, minimize waste, improve working conditions, gender equality and human rights.