Suit Quality: How to Spot Real Value in Fabrics, Stitching, and Fit

When you buy a suit, a tailored outfit made of woven fabric, typically including a jacket and trousers, designed for formal or professional wear. Also known as business suit, it's one of the few garments that can make or break your confidence in a meeting, interview, or wedding. But not all suits are built the same. The difference between a suit that lasts five years and one that pills after three wears comes down to three things: fabric, stitching, and fit. These aren’t marketing buzzwords—they’re the real building blocks of quality.

Suit fabric, the material woven into the suit’s outer layer, usually wool, cotton, or synthetic blends. Also known as cloth, it’s the first thing you should check. A good wool suit feels dense, not thin or scratchy. It should bounce back when you crumple it in your hand. Cheap suits use polyester blends that look shiny under light and never recover their shape. Look for 100% wool labeled as Super 100s or higher—the number means finer fibers and better drape. Then there’s suit stitching, the way the pieces are sewn together, especially around lapels, pockets, and seams. Also known as hand-stitched details, this is where you spot real craftsmanship. Machine-stitched suits have neat but rigid lines. A high-quality suit will have slight imperfections—like uneven thread tension or a few hand-stitched buttons—because a human made it. Check the inside: if the lining is glued instead of sewn, walk away. Glued linings crack and peel after a season. And then there’s suit fit, how the jacket and trousers sit on your body, not just your size. Also known as tailoring, fit is non-negotiable. A suit that’s too tight in the shoulders or too loose in the waist looks sloppy, no matter how expensive it is. The jacket should taper slightly at the waist, and the sleeves should show about half an inch of shirt cuff. Pants should break just once at the shoe—no bunching, no hovering.

These three elements—fabric, stitching, fit—are what separate a suit you wear once from one you inherit. You don’t need to spend thousands, but you do need to know what to look for. The posts below show you how to test fabric with your fingers, spot fake hand-stitching, adjust fit without a tailor, and pick the right suit for your body type—whether you’re buying online or in a store. No fluff. Just what works.