Quality of Fashion Clothing

Quality is a term which has always fascinated me. Beginning with the book Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance (where I found the simplest and most sensible definition, Quality means "peace of mind"). Since joining the business, I have been undertaking quality inspections to check the Fitting, colors, styling etc of the Fashion Clothes that we produce... its been close to 2 years and I still feel uncomfortable the day I need to go to a factory to check the packed goods.

I feel its a big challenge to understand the styling of the garment, especially when you make everything from a Woman's Evening Dress to simple cotton shirt. Each garment has its own aspects which defines its style. We usually start with the standard Measurement charts that we receive from the Buyer which sets out how much the length, heigh, width of skirt, armhole, bust, full body etc should be. Though these measuremnts can help you make a pattern, its just not easy to measure the same dimensions once the Garment is done by laying them flat on a table. Unfortunately, in India there are very few Girls/women working in garment factories (most stitching is done by men, as opposed to women in China, Russia, France etc) , even if there is a woman she probably never has and never will wear the kind of dress we make. Below is a picture of a dress we make, next to the way an indian woman is dressed.

If we had some Girls in the factory, it would just be easy to chose girls in different sizes, ask them to try on a few pieces and see how they fit. Since there are no girls, we try the second best option which is to put them on dummies. Several times though the piece might look fine on a dummy and bad on a lady, thats becuase when as an inspector you put the Garment on dummy you can adjust it as you like, but on a girl the garment just has a natural way of fitting which cant easily be messed with.

Inspite of the above limitations 90% of times we manage to get the Quality correct. And with my past experience I believe the times when the quality was right were the times when I looked at the garment on the dummy, made some measuremnts and felt some "peace of mind"... if my mind starts getting confused and restless, there is a problem with the garment. Unfortunately we do business in a country and industry where the Quality standards and understanding havs huge variations, so a typical day of checking would be 1 hr of checking and 6 hrs of explaining this confusion/restlessness in my mind to the producer.

Ofcourse, there have also been several instances where I chose to ignore this restlessness and ended up getting into trouble and having goods rejected. WHich leaves a big hole in your mind and pocket!