‘One size fits nobody’: markers of high-quality clothing are getting harder to find

Ensuring garments move with the wearer used to fall to pattern makers – but it is more common for brands to just use elastane nowadays. Photograph: Virojt Changyencham/Getty Images

Last week I went shopping with some friends who also work in fashion. We did high-end boutiques first and then went hunting through the stalls at a vintage market. At the market, more than the boutiques, we found ourselves geeking out over the clothes’ intricate details.

Silk crepe, 1940s tea dresses with delicate pleats along the waist; suits made of corduroy so thick they were still crisp, and field jackets in cotton so heavy they looked barely worn. As we left, the conversation turned to the construction and quality, how much better it was than anything new we had seen.