Spoiler, if you want to source high-quality fabric, the fiber tag is the wrong place to start.
I had a client making a pair of leggings who was dead set on a 40% nylon, 50% polyester, 10% spandex blend. Why? Because that’s what their competitor’s leggings were made of.
So they went out to suppliers and told them they needed that exact blend. And everything that came back, they were unhappy with.
Honestly, that makes total sense. Fiber content is one ingredient on a very long list, and when all the other building blocks don’t line up, the blend on the tag means almost nothing.
It’s the number one mistake I see brands make when they source fabric, and social media is making it WORSE. Every other viral video right now is yelling that polyester is plastic and not worth the money. And on the flip side, people hear “cotton” or “hemp” and assume it’s automatically good quality. IMO that’s how brands end up with garments that feel cheap and cost way too much.
There are different quality levels inside every single fiber group. To understand why, you need to know how fabric is made.
How fabric is made (and where the quality gets decided)
Every fabric goes through four levels before it ever becomes a garment.
Fiber = the raw material, like cotton, hemp, wool, polyester, or nylon
Yarn = what you get when those fibers are spun together
Fabric = what you get when those yarns are woven or knit
Finishing = the fabric gets dyed, printed, and sometimes treated with finishes that help it perform better (then it gets cut and sewn into a garment)
Quality can go up or down at every single one of those levels. Skip one and you’re only seeing a quarter of the picture.
Level 1 - the fiber
Let’s use cotton as an example. When you’re sourcing cotton, the two things that matter most are the length and the width of the fiber. You want long, thin fibers. Those are considered premium and make the best fabrics.
Short, thick fibers are low quality, which means you’re starting with bad ingredients before anyone has even touched a loom.
Level 2 - the yarn
Generally speaking, thinner yarns are considered superior, because thinner yarns need thinner, longer fibers to be made in the first place. They also tend to create drapey, flowy, comfortable fabrics.
Generally. There’s a lot of nuance here, and sometimes you WANT a chunky yarn, like for a sweater. But the yarn matters just as much as the fiber it came from.
Level 3 - the fabric construction
Whether your fabric is woven or knit, and how it’s constructed, changes how it feels and how it holds up. Different machines and techniques give you different results, even when the fiber and yarn are the same.
Level 4 - dyeing, printing, and finishing
This is the one people forget about completely. Different inks and printing methods give you very different results. Some prints will fade after a few washes, and others will hold up for hundreds.
And because of all these variables, an 80% cotton, 20% viscose fabric from one supplier might not be the same as an 80% cotton, 20% viscose fabric from the next supplier, even if everything else is held constant. Same tag. Totally different fabric.
The chocolate chip cookie problem
Here’s how I explain this to clients. Think about baking. You could make chocolate chip cookies with corn syrup and Hershey’s chocolate, or you could make them with single-origin cocoa and farm-to-table butter. You’re going to end up with a chocolate chip cookie either way. They might even have the same calories and the same nutritional content, but they will not be the same cookie.
Fabric works exactly the same way. The fiber tag is basically the nutrition label, and it tells you nothing about the cocoa.
And the flip side is true too. Sometimes you can source a fabric that performs like another fabric, even with a different fiber content, because of the quality of the materials it was made with. That’s exactly what my leggings client didn’t realize. They were so focused on matching a blend that they never asked how the fabric actually performs.
So how do you know if fabric is high quality?
You test it. Quality is not subjective. Quality is data that’s created in a lab about how a fabric performs.
The AATCC (American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists) publishes thousands of fabric tests that put fabric through a laboratory setting. You can test how much pressure it takes for a fabric to tear, how it holds up in chlorine, UV light, or salt water, and a whole lot more.
The catch is that testing is expensive, so you can’t test for everything (I wish you could). That’s why the first question I ask every client is what’s important to them. Then we build the testing around that answer. A swimwear brand and a linen shirt brand are going to care about completely different things, so they should be testing completely different things.
And if you’re sourcing fabric and nobody has asked you what the garment needs to DO, that’s a red flag.
Stop picking suppliers just because the big brands use them (small brands, this part is for you)
This one drives me a little crazy. Brands reach out to the huge suppliers because their big competitors work with them, and they assume bigger must mean better.
It doesn’t. Just because a major brand uses a supplier does not make that supplier better than a smaller one. It just makes them big.
There are fabric suppliers out there who specialize in working with small brands. They’re going to give you better service, and they’re going to care more about your order and your product’s quality. A supplier who’s used to getting 100,000-meter fabric orders isn’t going to lose any sleep over your small order. A supplier who works with small brands will, because your order actually matters to them.
How to source high-quality fabric: the one thing I’d do differently
If you only take one thing away from this post, look at your fabric holistically. Don’t just look at the fiber. Don’t just look at the construction. Don’t just look at one thing. Look at the entire material and how it was made, from fiber all the way through finishing.
Tell your supplier the end goal, not just the spec
Then communicate clearly with your fabric suppliers about what you need. And I don’t mean handing them a rigid spec sheet. Sometimes the best thing a brand can do is tell the supplier the end goal of the fabric and the garment, and let the supplier decide what’s best.
When you walk in demanding one exact blend, you put yourself in a box. The supplier might have an even better option for what you’re trying to achieve, but they can’t offer it if you’ve already told them exactly what you want. (Yes, I know that’s the opposite of what my leggings client did.)
If you’re trying to source high-quality fabric for a new product and want help finding the right materials and the right suppliers, that’s what I do every day with brands. Just reach out and tell me what you’re making.
Quick answers
What makes fabric high quality? Quality gets decided at every level of how fabric is made: the fiber (long, thin fibers are premium), the yarn, the fabric construction, and the dyeing and finishing. Skip one and you’re only seeing part of the picture.
How do you know if fabric is good quality? You test it. Quality is data from a lab about how a fabric performs, and the AATCC publishes thousands of tests for exactly that.
Is polyester a quality fabric? It depends. There are different quality levels inside every single fiber group, polyester included, so the fiber name alone doesn’t tell you.
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