The Question Nobody Asks in the Fabric Halls

It is the second week of the season and I have been holding cloth for six hours. My hands smell of wool. Somewhere around the fourth appointment a buyer from Antwerp asks me the question I get every season, always in a slightly lowered voice, as though it were rude:

"How do I know this is the cloth you say it is?"

It is the only question in the room that matters, and almost nobody asks it out loud.

What "Italian fabric" tells you

Every supplier you meet will tell you they use Italian cloth. Most of them are telling the truth in the narrowest possible sense, and all of them know that you cannot check.

That is the whole problem. A claim that cannot be checked carries no information. It costs nothing to make, so everyone makes it, so it tells you nothing about who is worth ordering from.

Compare it with a different sentence: this bunch, from this mill, this reference number, this weight, and the reference printed on your order paperwork. That one can be verified, and fewer people say it for exactly that reason.

So the test has less to do with fabric than with whether a supplier is willing to be specific in writing. Everything below is a way of finding that out.

Ask for the bunch, not the country

A mill does not sell "Italian wool." It sells bunches: numbered swatch books, issued by season, each carrying a defined set of cloths with stated compositions and weights.

A Super 110s worsted in a 280 gram twill, from a named bunch, is a thing that exists in the world and can be pointed at. "Italian wool" is a category with a flag attached.

So instead of do you use Italian fabric, ask:

Which bunch, and what is the reference?

When a supplier answers a fabric question with an adjective, you have learned something. When they answer with a number, you have learned something considerably better.

Notice what this question does even when the answer is disappointing. A supplier who says we buy unbranded cloth woven to our specification, here is the composition and weight has told you the truth and may be an excellent partner. The one to walk away from is the one who keeps saying Italian.

Three things for your paperwork

Before any money moves, ask for these in a single email rather than on a call, because you want the answer in a form that still exists in six months.

The first is the bunch name and reference. If they hold real mill accounts this is trivial for them and takes one line.

The second is composition and weight in grams per metre. Weight is the number amateurs never ask for and the one that decides most of how the finished suit behaves. Under 240 g is summer weight and will crease. 240 to 300 g is where most business suiting belongs. Above 340 g is autumn and winter. A supplier who cannot give you a weight is not reading from a mill book.

The third is confirmation that the mill reference will appear on your order documentation. This one separates the field, because it commits them, in advance, to a specific claim on a specific piece of paper.

None of the three is hard for a supplier who is doing what they say, and all three are awkward for one who is not. That asymmetry is the entire value of asking.

The selvedge test

Many mills weave their name into the selvedge, the finished edge of the roll. Ask for it in the parcel with your sample.

I want to be straight about how much this proves on its own, which is less than people think. Selvedge can be trimmed. A photograph of a selvedge proves that a selvedge exists somewhere, and anyone determined to mislead you can get around this particular check without much effort.

It still earns its place, for the same reason as everything else here: it is specific, easy for an honest supplier and annoying for a dishonest one. You are watching how somebody behaves when asked to be precise, which is a different exercise from building a courtroom case.

One fixed quote

This is the test I would run, and it costs a few emails.

Pick one garment and hold it completely fixed. A half-canvassed two-piece, a named bunch, a stated weight, the same lining, the same buttons, the same everything. Send that identical specification to every supplier on your shortlist, then read the replies for shape rather than for price.

The useful supplier comes back with a line-by-line answer: cloth, making, trims, your label, packing, and freight and duty stated separately. The word ex-works or FOB appears somewhere and they explain which one they mean. The one to be careful with comes back with a single number and warm language.

You will find, doing this, that the quotes were never comparable in the first place. Two suppliers quoting the same garment on different Incoterms can differ by a third before anyone has been dishonest about anything. This is the most common way a cheap supplier turns out not to be cheap, and you can only see it by fixing the garment and reading the structure of the answer.

What we put on paper

I would rather apply all of this to us than have you take my word for it.

We hold accounts with European mills, and we will give you the bunch and the reference for anything we quote from them, before you order. Our own house range is a different case: it sits in our building rather than at a mill, so there is no outside bunch number to hand over, and the composition and weight on the swatch card are ours to publish rather than copy from somebody else's book. Where a line in that range carries a composition on the card, it is a single fibre, no undeclared blends. Weight across everything we carry, house range and mill cloth together, runs from 98 to 440 grams, which on its own is wide enough to explain why two suits that are both technically wool can behave nothing alike on a warm afternoon. Ask for swatches and you will get selvedge where the mill weaves one.

Then there is the thing half the industry blurs, and we will not.

The cloth is European or Australian, depending on the line. The garments are cut and sewn in Shanghai, in our own atelier, by our own tailors. Origin is really three questions, and we answer them separately rather than collapsing them into one flattering word: where the fibre grew, where the cloth was finished, where the garment was made.

I am aware that saying this costs us something with a certain kind of buyer. It is worth it, and not out of virtue. A supplier who is vague about origin to win your order has shown you exactly how they will handle the next awkward question, once they have your deposit.

The short version

If you take one thing from this, take the substitution: stop asking where the fabric is from, and start asking which bunch it is, what it weighs, and whether the reference goes on your paperwork.

The suppliers worth your money will answer in one email. The rest will send you a paragraph about Italian heritage, and you will have your answer anyway.

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If you want to run that test on us, tell us the garment and we will quote it properly, with the bunch and the weight on the page. Our suit fabric guide covers what the specifications mean, the house cloth range lists every composition and weight we hold, and if you are earlier than that, the guide to starting a clothing brand has the other nine questions worth asking a factory before you send money.