Red-carpet fashion checklist: what to check before you buy

This is a checklist for buying a formal garment you will keep, for an event where there will be cameras. It is written for the shop, then for home, then for the tailor, because that is the order the decisions arrive in, and because a garment that fails in the shop should never reach the tailor. Every item is a test with a pass and a fail, not a preference.

The mechanics behind the tests are set out on the press lane page and the list of planning mistakes. This page is only the tests.

What to take away

• Fabric is tested by folding, sitting and flash. Construction is tested from the inside. Fit is tested in the shoes, on camera.
• Buy nothing you have not sat down in, photographed with flash from a distance, and turned inside out.
• The receipt is part of the garment. Returns, alteration allowance and the care label decide what the purchase actually costs.

In the shop: fabric

• Crumple a handful of the cloth in your fist for ten seconds and let go. Pass: it recovers within a minute. Fail: the creases stay.
• Hold a double layer up to the shop's strongest light. Pass: opaque. Fail: you can see your hand through it. A hard flash is brighter than any shop light.
• Photograph the fabric with a phone flash from three meters. Pass: texture and color hold. Fail: a bright patch, or a color that shifted.
• Look at the surface from the side under the light. Pass: matte, or a shine you have chosen. Fail: shine you had not noticed.
• Check the grain: does the weave run straight down the garment, or on the bias by design? Pass: straight, or deliberately bias. Fail: twisted, which means the piece will hang crooked after cleaning.
• Read the fiber and care label. Pass: you know what it is made of and how it is cleaned. Fail: a label you cannot read or a garment that cannot be cleaned.

In the shop: construction

• Turn it inside out. Pass: seams finished, lining attached cleanly, no loose threads. Fail: raw edges, or a lining floating free at the hem.
• Find the seam allowance at the side seams and center back. Pass: enough cloth to let out at least one size. Fail: trimmed to nothing, which means the garment can only be taken in.
• Find the hem allowance. Pass: enough to lengthen if the shoes change. Fail: a rolled or faced hem with no depth.
• Work the zip or closures three times. Pass: smooth, with a hook or catch at the top. Fail: catching, or a zip carrying the whole strain.
• If there is structure, find it: boning, a built-in corselet, shoulder pads. Pass: it sits where it should on your body. Fail: it sits where it should on the sample body.
• Check where the weight of the garment is carried. Pass: at the shoulder or waist, by a seam or a band. Fail: by the zip, or by nothing.

In the shop: fit and movement

• Wear the shoes you will actually wear, or ones of the same heel height. If you do not have them, do not set the hem, and do not buy a garment whose hem cannot be changed.
• Wear the undergarments you will actually wear.
• Sit down for five minutes in a chair. Stand. Look at the lap in a photograph.
• Walk the length of the shop, turn on the spot three times, and raise both arms. Pass: nothing needs adjusting afterwards. Fail: anything does.
• Photograph yourself from a few meters, with flash, from slightly below eye level. Judge the photograph, not the mirror.
• Check the color against your face in daylight near the window, not only under the shop's lamps. The warm or cool test is quicker in a shop than anywhere else, because the alternatives are on the rail next to it.

Before paying: the terms

• Return policy, in writing, including whether an altered garment can be returned. Usually it cannot.
• Whether the shop offers alterations, who does them, what they cost and how long they take.
• Whether a second fitting is included.
• Whether the price is final or a sale price, and what the same garment costs elsewhere. The tiles under an event photograph are a sales channel, not a price check; use the retailer's own site.
• Whether the garment can be professionally cleaned locally, and roughly what that costs, because a piece that cannot be cleaned is a piece worn once.

At home, before alterations

• Hang it for a day and check whether the hem hangs level. A bias-cut or a heavy fabric drops.
• Sit in it for twenty minutes on a sofa. Stand. Photograph.
• Try it with every piece of jewelry you intend to wear, and check that clasps and earring backs do not catch the fabric.
• Try it with the bag, the coat, the wrap. Decide where each lives during the evening.
• Decide the after-party version, if any.

At the tailor

• Bring the shoes, the undergarments and the jewelry. All of them.
• Have the hem set standing on a hard floor, then check it on a step.
• Ask for the alterations to be done with the seam allowance kept, not cut away, so the garment can change again.
• Book the second fitting at least two days before the event, not the day before.
• Ask what the tailor would change that you did not ask for. A good one will have seen something.

Alterations are where a bought garment becomes a fitted one, and they are the part of formal dressing that is genuinely affordable compared with the garment itself. Budget for them from the start.

Common questions

How many of these can I skip in a hurry?

The sit test, the flash photograph and the seam allowance check are the three that catch most failures. Do those three at minimum.

What if the shop will not let me photograph or sit?

Buy elsewhere. A shop that will not let you test a garment is selling a mirror.

Is a garment that fails one test always wrong?

No. A fail is a cost. A fabric that creases can be steamed on arrival by a dresser; a hem with no allowance can be accepted if the shoes are fixed. The list tells you what you are paying for later.

Does this apply to hired garments?

All of it except the alteration items, and the terms section matters more, because damage and cleaning clauses replace the return policy.