Buying clothing online means judging construction from images taken by the person selling it to you. That sounds hopeless, and it is not — the images give away more than most sellers intend.

Look for a photograph of the garment hanging

A piece on a hanger, photographed straight on, shows you how it falls. If every image is of a model mid-movement, or artfully bunched on a surface, ask why.

Fabric that hangs straight and heavy is behaving well. Fabric that flares out stiffly near the hem is either very starched or very synthetic, and the starch does not survive a wash.

Find the seams

A close photograph of a side seam or an armhole tells you more than any description. You are looking for a seam that lies flat, without puckering, and for the pattern to continue across it rather than jumping.

Matched patterns at a seam cost fabric and attention. A seller who bothered there almost certainly bothered elsewhere.

Read what is missing

Weight in grams, the actual fibre content, the length of the piece as photographed and the height of the person wearing it — these are cheap to publish and genuinely useful. Their absence is a choice.

Be equally suspicious of a listing where every photograph is identically lit and perfectly even. Real cloth has irregularity in it. A photograph with none has usually been worked on until it stopped being a photograph of that cloth.

And then ask

Anyone selling something they made, or chose carefully, can answer a direct question about it in a sentence. How does it wash. What is it actually made of. Will the colour move.

The answer matters less than whether there is one.