I've actually heard a French fashion student opine that generally speaking, French made garments are better quality than those made in East/South-east/South Asia.

Although she didn't say anything about why this was the case, I imagine she'd agree that it's more to do with French workers having better working conditions and aiming for the higher end of the market, which means they use better materials, rather than some innate superiority of the French that makes the uniquely well-suited to tailoring.

Probably the best single, lazy marker for “is this article of clothing decent-quality?” is whether it’s made with developed-world labor, and the reason is simply that it doesn’t make much sense to pay ultra-expensive labor to make pieces with poor construction and shitty materials, since you’ll end up with not just crap, but expensive crap.

Good stuff’s made almost everywhere, but it takes more diligence to find it from other sources.

I suppose there's the idea that companies outsource to the cheapest possible countries because they want to produce things as cheaply as possible on all counts (not just labor), which is generally contradictory with high quality.

But this is not necessarily the case, at least not per some clothing companies' claims, see for instance "loom" https://la-mode-a-l-envers.loom.fr/, a French clothing company that produces in Portugal (considerably cheaper labor than France and a developed textile industry) despite their main selling point being quality and durability.

It is perfectly conceivable that a company would try to cut costs on labor, while still attempting to produce high quality things. Perhaps not the most common, but not impossible.

Yeah totally agree on this. And I think that's should be the example of good product.

I'm Portuguese, and although we have a lot of high quality textiles being produced here and being used by high end designer brands, most Portuguese people are surprised when they see the label.

It's usually a very B2B thing (outdated and vague corporate site, if any) but I've purchased very nice blanks from these factories for very good prices by contacting them directly.

There's also a lot of shoe production, but for this there are well known consumer facing stores so people are more aware.

At least for made in the USA garments, the joke is always that the actual labor is still people from the third world, making less than minimum wage- they're just in LA instead of Guatemala.

Yes, I've never considered worker skill (much less race) to be a factor in the low quality of mass-market items.

The mass production process and target price point seem much more relevant.

That said, mass production processes are also tailored (ahem) to allow specialization - it's doubtful that one person takes the garment from fabric bolts to completed garment as could happen in a bespoke, individual tailor context (though I'm sure custom garments are generally produced by teams of workers as well!)

So individual workers are likely to be very highly skilled in their individual specialty step and equipment, but may not have the range of production and design skill of a master craftsman.

Same goes for electronics. Why is ‘everything’ made in Shenzhen/GBA/China? Skilled labor.

I took it as more like, people might kinda think to themselves, “this shirt was made by my friend with time and love instead of just, you know, coming off the production line” as if mass produced clothing is just made by some big corporate machine. But of course someone somewhere is actually putting in work to make a shirt for you, always.