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It's usually a very B2B thing (outdated and vague corporate site, if any) but I've purchased very nice blanks from these factories for very good prices by contacting them directly.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