Comment by tsunamifury | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tsunamifury | Hacker News Reader

Textile quality, tailoring and fit, or a good price: in general with very few exceptions you pick two. I am a fanatic about my clothing quality and have searched high and low to find the right quality. Fit is, in general based on taste, and price is really limited by your time to search sales.

I’ve arrived at the conclusion that Loro piana, Brunello Cuccinelli and to a lesser degree Zenga provide the very best quality generally available, but at an ultra steep price point. Their designs are conservative, but not boring, and they will last many seasons without going out of fashion.

On the bargain end these days he pickings have become very thin due to the Chinese textile death spiral middle market brands are in. Uniqlo provides good quality on certain items for a great price. But most others are single season junk if that. Middle market brands like Theory and Vince are barely better and not worth the cost. Gap Subsidiaries have also fallen to Zara quality for twice the price. Same for Hugo Boss and similar.

It’s left the average person looking for reasonable fashionable designs and good quality with very very few options. Outlet high end retail is the best ROI today when compared to cheaper new clothing.

> I’ve arrived at the conclusion that Loro piana, Brunello Cuccinelli and to a lesser degree Zenga provide the very best quality generally available

Why not go bespoke at this point? I keep asking myself this, laziness seems to be the only reason.

Because I wear their streetwear lines not suits. But on that note I visited Saville Row on my last trip to London and even they talked of Brunello admiringly.

Surely bespoke streetwear isn't more expensive than (high end) bespoke suits?

(high end) bespoke streetwear is almost certainly going to be more expensive than (high end) bespoke suits.

I’m curious who might even provide that. I know at trunk shows I have customized fabrics on street wear but never any concept of bespoke. I’d imagine you’d have to be a six figure spend or more client to get that privilege.

Really depends on the kind of "streetwear". Bespoke jeans, leather jackets, tees and boots will be easy to come by.

Anything more "exotic" will depend on the specific garment. Lots of adventurous tailors around there, but some items are just fundamentally better suited for mass production.

I don't think you'll need six figure spends unless you want something particularly difficult to make. Everything weird is going to be expensive though, developing a whole new pattern takes a while.

vnapersona bespoke by Maurizio Altieri looks fascinating, I'm not sure how attainable it is though.

At least Zegna is quite a bit cheaper than Loro Piana, so it might be a better value, at their main lines. Diffusion ones like Z Zegna might be iffier. But pretty much everything is getting to the "not what it used to be" stage.

ZZenga and the old Zenga Sport seem to be of nearly the same quality, more forward designs and fewer exotic materials (mostly cotton and synthetics, with some wool). I generally find their sportswear to be very nice. If ZZ didn't add some of the louder Italian branding, like Emperio Armani, it would be the best quality/value tradeoff.

You're more likely to find items made in low-cost countries those lines, though. I had Sport jeans fall apart much sooner than I expected (which for gauze-thin linen isn't that much to begin with), while E.Zegna stuff has been going strong for 10+ years now.

But at least it's not Armani Exchange, which is H&M quality at best.

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