Can most people really tell expensive clothes from good high street pieces?

[pontipinemum]

I'm listening to an audiobook at the moment and the main character talks about her clothes a lot. About how expensive clothes look better etc.

Now I am absolutely NOT a fashionist by any stretch.

I am wondering though can others tell the difference? I'm not talking about really cheap shein clothes etc. Or really unusually designed dresses.

But say a regular clothing item like this Chanel pull over, it is nice but I absolutely would not be able to tell if it was $3,500 or if it was £40 from Marks and Spencer

https://www.chanel.com/us/fashion/p/P82481K11949UA790/pullover-wool-silk/

That’s really interesting and makes me think about my own holiday wear as mine is more like hers but I’m not poverty struck I just feel an idiot in the kind of stuff that the friends were wearing. I said this in another thread but it’s to do with self image , the kind of a who am I kidding trying to look nice on holiday when I’m a mess. It’s specific to hot holiday wear though.

Well I can't speak for most people, but I can certainly tell. But I have a background in knowing how to tell. Actually though, I think if you put a very cheap item and a very expensive side by side then most people would be able to tell.

Men’s clothes across all price points are better quality than the women’s offerings. Even somewhere very cheap like Peacocks the women’s ranges verses the men’s looks so much shoddier than the women. I guess it is because men buy less and expect their clothes to last. Women have tended to just buy more and more and that is why we are fobbed off. There seems to be a backlash. All those ubiquitous housewives now known as influencers flogging hauls gifted to them seems to be on the wane. More people are questioning shops business models and quality.

Patrick Grant said he was at a dinner and the owner of H & M was there. PG was talking about fast fashion, and the planet etc. The H & M man said what can I do to help. PG told him to close down his shops. I bet he was popular.

Should have read re Peacocks the women’s ranges look more shoddier than the men’s.

Agreed. But for me it was almost every window along Bond Street.

I accept I'm skint and not their intended audience or client but I found much of what was on show to be deeply unattractive. There were a few exceptions, but not many. Especially amongst the shoes - absolutely hideous.

Maybe if it was obvious. I went on a Christmas shopping trip in a city. I had never been in Selfridges before I had heard of it but I thought it was similar to Debenhams and John Lewis. I noticed a lot of security guards spotted a nice jumper for DD didn’t look anything special.But when I looked at the price it was £1,200 more than my entire Christmas budget.😳😮

I also think most people could tell. The people who couldn’t I suspect don’t tend to wear more expensive brands and don’t socialise with people who do. Most of the comments are about some random and a dislike of their style rather than product quality, and people seem heavily focused on designer for some reason, when designer is far from the only quality clothing available.

i think you can tell when someone is “well dressed”, be it in good trousers, a lovely top, dress, knitwear or jacket.

the heavily branded designer gear is a different bracket again. Which often veers to tacky imo.

the ops question was based on a relatively unbranded silk and wool Chanel pullover, I don’t think anyone really would lay that side by side with a primark or markies one and not be able to tell the difference, or even see two people wearing them and not be able to see the clear difference. You’d know immediately as the difference in quality would be very visible.

Without a doubt.

But there is a huge difference between good quality, and over-priced (that pink sweater). The quality of the fabric, the cut, the structure, lining, seams, how it withstands cleaning are all key..

I wore a high quality dress in to work yesterday and had four compliments, despite the fact I bought it in 2010. It still looks new, retains its crispness, its shape.

Would disagree with Chanel staff being snobby - i had to recently go into the store here in Dublin as had an issue with a pair of shoes i had ( I bought mine second hand ) I went rushing one eve after spending the day at an activity with my nieces. They couldn't have been nicer, couldn't deal with my issue directly but pointed in the right direction where i could get it sorted. Another assistant chatted with my nieces as they sat in the chairs, were very nice to them, asking about their day showing them sparkly bags. I was very impressed with them

I don't really have expensive things but I have a few nicer jumpers. I use a lint/ bobble remover machine thing. It was about €10 on amazon. It is surprising how well it works

Wool is always distinguishable. And wool from even supposedly high end High Street is poorer quality than from specialist wool retailers.

Absolutely wool is one of the most distinguishable, as posted up thread , you get different grades of wool, with the cheaper jumpers being made from wool from mature sheep, which results in a scratchy rougher type product, as it’s thicker and coarser,m or they do a wool blend, often with acrylic, to try to make it softer due to the poor wool used, A high end wool like a grade A cashmere is a whole different feel and look as is a higher end wool.

You even get different grades of merino and lambs wool, which is easily , distinguishable. You can tell by look, feel and also performance, for example high end wool will just snap back and retain its shape.low quality cheap wool, will feel coarse and will not retain its shape.

even different cashmere are easily distiguishable, I have a markies cashmere jumper and a me and em cashmere tank, the quality in difference is so huge they look to be made of different materials entirely, from the softness to the appearance to how they hold their shape.

even t shirts it’s noticeable, cotton comes in different grades.and there are huge differences in the quality, the feel, the performance depending on the quality and grade of the cotton used.

You even get different grades of merino and lambs wool, which is easily , distinguishable. You can tell by look, feel and also performance, for example high end wool will just snap back and retain its shape.low quality cheap wool, will feel coarse and will not retain its shape.

I don't agree with that at all. It's winter here and the shops are full of merino clothing. I have had some expensive and some cheap garments and the cheap ones retain their shape and are just as soft as the expensive ones.

I think that high end cashmere is different, but you do have to go quite high end. I have cardigan from Agnes B which is Mongolian cashmere. It cost in the region of £500 but it is flawless, despite being a number of years old. It’s made from long cashmere strands, so there is no pilling at all.

In my experience, it’s virtually impossible to find this quality cashmere in regular high street stores. Even cashmere from the higher end of the high street (e.g. Jigsaw), pills. They even provide you with a cashmere comb and tell you that it’s likely to pill in the label! Who has time in their life to pick bobbles off jumpers?! This doesn’t happen with proper high end cashmere.

Also personal tailoring. If you get your clothes adjusted to fit. They look more expensive

It’s factual not an opinion, you can google and do some research.

Factual or not I prefer to go by my own lived experience. I often find "factual" is anything but. Funny how Google knows so much more than those of us who wear a lot of merino. You carry on getting all your "facts" from the internet, living in a country which is a big player in merino production I think I am qualified to make up my own mind.

Wool is graded by thickness, count in the microns, among other things. Anything above 19 microns is felt as different levels of coarse or itchy against the skin. It’s a known fact and different ways of sorting and preparing wool for spinning (worsted versus woolen) have been known long before the invention of internet and before Google.

Sometimes silence is golden.

Agree re Primark. I have a few things from there that I've had for years. Mostly just standard tops and t shirts. There was a point in time when M&S basics were too short in body and sleeve so they date from that era.

The thing about the fashion industry is that insiders will often pick up high street pieces to pair with designer pieces. Different from the customer snobbery in the fictional piece the OP mentions

There are thousands of breeds of sheep in the world and very many of them produce wool that is naturally more coarse than extra fine merino. There are around 60 breeds of sheep in the UK alone and to my knowledge only Bluefaced Leicester’s wool is on the thinner side, the rest is quite coarse because Northern Europe has different climate to Australia and New Zealand where the extra fine merino comes from.
This doesn’t mean that the wool from other breeds is only from mature sheep or poor quality, it’s just different. Sometimes you choose to support the local farmers, sometimes you don’t want to add to emissions related to transporting merino across the globe, sometimes you want a short and traceable value chain or just a very weatherproof sweater. It doesn’t mean that you are buying inferior quality wool!

You are lucky. I find the opposite when it comes to cashmere (I find even good merino a bit scratchy) - and also that quality varies massively between companies.

I bought Jaeger cashmere 10-15 years ago that is good as new still.
John Lewis cashmere looked shit in a few months.
Lily Silk cashmere is still amazing after being worn day in day out.
M&S cashmere tends to be good quality.
Uniqlo cashmere feels scratchy to me.

This is not in dispute, no one is saying there are not many breeds of sheep, or anything similar. The simple fact of the matter is wool is graded with different qualities available, from the wool used 9n carpets to the wool used in cheaper jumpers to the more expensive wools

im utterly baffled that a people don’t know that and b actually are arguing it’s not true, when a simple few mins googling would educate them.

it seems to be causing real offense that all wools are not created equal!

It can vary between brands and even some brands have shoddy clothing and really good quality items even though it’s the same brand.

Canada Goose is very good quality

Ralph Lauren - very hit and miss
Boss - very hit and miss
Moschino - crap

chanel make up is much better than say Boots No7, never had their clothing though.

years ago there were a big difference between designer and high street, but now maybe not so much

I generally can't tell by looking at it from a distance.

But I would notice if I could touch it / try it on / examine the hemming etc.

I don't think the £3500 jumper is worth it, because I don't care about designer branded stuff. But I do think quality clothes that are made from good fabric are worth it.

Fabric label isn't enough though. I bought a 100% silk blouse (new from H&M via Vinted) and although it was silk it was total trash. The fabric was thin, the buttons were so thin they snapped in half, it was literally coming apart at the seams and the neckline sat weirdly. I've never bought anything from H&M since.

I also have some knickers from China which are labelled 100% silk but I'm pretty certain they're polyester.

I have jeans from Tesco. I can't tell the difference between them and more expensive ones by looking - they're really nice. The only thing that gives it away is the button metal. It looks fine, but it must be a cheap metal because it reacts with my skin and really itches which I've never experienced before.

The difference between high street and designer pieces are material quality and tailoring, yes I can tell the difference. As a PP said: button holes, collars, sleeves etc are the areas you spot a high street vs. designer piece.