When you want a choose a quality garment, there are three areas to focus on: fabric, cut and finish, so let's look at the first of those three areas - fabric.

Firstly, try not to confuse fabrics with fibres. Fabrics are made from fibres: satin is a fabric, silk is a fibre; worsted is a fabric, wool is a fibre.  

There are two main types of fibres - natural and man-made.

Man-made fibres

Man-made fibres as a category comprise both completely synthetic fibres (such as nylon) which are usually derived from petroleum, and 'man-made' fibres (such as viscose) which are reconstructed from natural materials such as wood pulp.

The advantage of man-made fibres is that they're cheap to produce and the quality doesn't vary from year to year or season to season, but they also have disadvantages: some, lke viscose, do not wear well, and others, such as nylon, may not 'breathe' or allow you to sweat. The latest generation of microfibres, however, such as Cool Climate, have overcome this problem by making the weave looser. Many synthetics are also cold to the touch, but that can be either an advantage or a disadvantage.

Synthetic fibres may also have implications for the environment in that they don't biodegrade (polyester is an exception to this, as if destroyed at high temperature, it results in carbon and water, making it quite eco-friendly). However, synthetic fibres can be very strong and smooth. 

All man-made fibres begin life as a kind of 'soup' of molecules which are then stuck back together to form filaments which are then twisted together to make threads. This enables man-made fibres to be produced in vast quantities, but it can also leave them inherently weak. Viscose, made from wood pulp is one of the worst, and has a tendency to pill and fracture - no viscose garment will be long-lived. On the other hand, microfibre filaments are among the strongest fibres available, creating fabrics that are smoothy, drapy and hard to put a pin through. Synthetic fibres can now also be produced with permanent crinkle finishes that produce an alluring texture - the Japanese manufacturers such as Nuno are the world leaders in these specialised fabrics. 

Natural fibres

Natural fibres are produced from either plant (cellulose) fibre such as cotton bolls, flax stems or hemp stalks, or created from animal (protein) pelts such as sheep's wool, alpaca and cashmere. However, silk is produced in a different way - pulled from the cocoon of the silk moth in a way not dissimilar from untwisting a spider's web. 

The length of different kinds of natural fibre varies - the longest is silk, a single filament of which can be over a mile long, and the shortest is 'short-staple' cotton - the lowest-quality cotton - whose tufts may be half an inch long or less. Long-staple cotton, in contrast, has a tuft of three inches or more, making it a very smooth, flat fibre. Linen lies somewhere in between, with filaments about three feet long, and wool is shorter, at several inches for the longest 'staples'. Fabrics such as hemp and ramie - a kind of nettle - have filaments about as long as those of linen. 

The simple rule  with natural fibres is, the longer the staple, the better quality the resulting fabric will be. Egyptian and Pima cotton, for instance, produce a high-class, long-lasting fabric. I have bedding and towels nearly 20 years old made from Egyptian cotton, which is still going strong and has seen off many cheaper rivals in the meantime, and one shirt of 'Sea Island' cotton that is over 50 years old and in beautiful condition. 

In silk, long, unbroken lengths are only produced when the silk cocoon is boiled with the grub still inside, at which point the cocoon can be unwound like a reel of thread. If the grub should hatch out, the threads are broken, but many silk fabrics are produced using exactly this method, which results in slubs and breaks in the fabric that give a very attractive texture - examples include tussah and shantung, while examples of full-filament silk include chiffon, charmeuse and georgette. 

In wools, the longest staple is found on animals such as the Merino sheep, which produces a wool that is flat, silky and very hard-wearing. Again, you pay a premium for it, but with care, a merino sweater will last virtually a lifetime. However, there are other qualities in wool that we find valuable, such as 'loft' - lightness and fluffiness that traps air and keeps you warm, and simple softness. For loft, few wools are better than Shetland, which is amazingly lightweight for the warmth it gives, while for sheer softness, you're looking at premium-price fibres such as angora, camelhair, alpaca and, above all else, cashmere. 

One fibre that is becoming more popular in both clothing and bedding is bamboo, a smooth, pleasant fabric whose hollow structure permits wicking. However, the means by which bamboo rayon is produced should more truthfully put it in the man-made section rather than the natural, as a solvent has to be used to break down the fibre of the stalk.  

What to look for

For practical purposes, most of us wear fabrics that are mixtures of natural and synthetic fibres - natural for feel and a bit of added nylon or polyester for strength. When you're looking for quality in a garment, however, look for a high percentage of natural fibre - at least 70 per cent is a good guideline, but higher is generally better. Many garments also benefit from an added 2 per cent Lycra, which enables them to bounce back after wear and washing without altering the feel of the cloth. Most quality men's trousers today contain about 2 per cent lycra, while cotton t-shirts with 2-5 per cent elasthane will often wear better than pure cotton jersey, which becomes stretched out and baggy. If you're fond of viscose t-shirts, they should really contain 5 per cent elasthane if you want them to last any time at all and even then, they will pill on the inside.

Production affects price

Methods of production also affect the price of a fabric. The wider the fabric, for instance, the more money is usually costs because the wider loom costs more money to set up. The more threads there are to the inch, the more a fabric will cost, because you're actually getting more fabric for your money - one example would include Tana lawn, which is made from extremely fine cotton threads, but has a high thread count, resulting in a fabric that is very thin, light, smooth and hard-wearing.

The smaller the quantity of fabric produced, the more you will also pay, because there are no reductions for production volume - this affects suiting wools such as worsted which are not produced in large quantities. The more handwork that's involved right along the process, again, the more you have to pay - cashmere, for instance, has to be hand-combed out of a goat's belly, rather than being sheared off by electric trimmers, and Pima cotton is often hand-picked to protect the cotton boll.

Woven fabrics usually cost more than prints, because a loom has to be specially set up for the purpose, but they are also generally considered to be more desireable because the design goes all the way through and shows on the reverse, often giving an attractive effect. Examples include herringbone weaves, tartan and pinstripe suiting, but also more complicated weaves such as jacquard, which require special looms. 

In printed fabrics, the number of colours affects the price, because you're paying for each pass of the fabric through the printing rollers, and each colour of ink. But even a plain colour can affect price if the dye is expensive or difficult to fix. Fabric printed with metallic inks costs more again - metallic inks are usually powder-in-liquid formulations that are difficult for the printer to handle. 

Lastly, price is affected by desireability, and that is a factor that is constantly changing. The minute that a new fabric or fibre appears on the scene, it becomes desireable, as we all saw with pashmina some years ago. If it can then be produced in quantity, its desireability falls and the price along with it. 

How to check fabric quality in a garment

When you come to actually buying clothes, how do you tell a quality fabric?

Firstly, look inside. If there is a fabric manufacturer's label in addition to the garment manufacturer's label, this is a good sign because it means they're proud of their product - you will always, for instance, find the Harris tweed label in any garment made from it. Fabrics such as Tana lawn, hand-woven Irish linen and Egyptian cotton will usually also be mentioned separately on the label, or in the product description if you're buying online.

Next look at the label that tells you the fabric breakdown. Look, in general, for 100 per cent natural fibres (this might be a mixture, such as wool and angora, but they're both natural). Generally speaking, the higher the proportion of synthetic, the less you should pay for the garment, unless the synthetic is a proprietary brand name - something you're most likely to see in specialist clothing such as that designed for sports or extreme weather conditions.

Look at the position of the fibre label. Labels for high-end fibres or fabrics are always placed somewhere prominent such as the back of the neck or the front facing of a coat, while those for poor-quality fabrics such as cheap synthetics and cottons tend to be hidden in a side seam. 

A word about wools - when a garment is made from a premium wool such as merino, alpaca or cashmere, it will be labelled as such. If it's labelled 'lambswool', this is the first shearing in a sheep's life, which is softer than subsequent shearings - be prepared to pay a bit extra for it. If it's labelled 'Pure New Wool' this is a mixture of wools of varying quality, but all of which are from fresh shearings - the price should not be so high as lambswool. If it's simply labelled 'wool', this is a mixture of wools, some of which are from new shearings but some of which may be reused wools, collected from old fabrics - it will not wear very well, as much of the tensile strength has been lost. Pay only a low price for these garments.  

Now take a section of the fabric and hold it up to the light, and tug the threads in opposite directions. Are there lots of threads per inch? How much give is there? How much light can you see? A thin, cheap cotton will have lots of give and let through lots of light, whereas a thickly woven dotted Swiss is a tough fabric that you have to pay a premium for. However, a thin, cheap cotton may be just what you want for a beach holiday sarong or a casual scarf - you still need to think about the purposes to which you're going to put the garment. 

Run your hands over the fabric and check it for quality and smoothness. Scratch it with your fingernails - does it pill or come up? Has it got a nap that can be combed one way or the other? A nap is a good sign on quality coats, which are almost like an animal's pelt in their finish, and the deeper the pile on a velvet, the better quality it is. 

Now take a sleeve or leg of the garment and crush and twist it tightly in your hands and hold it, keeping it warm, for 20 seconds. It's obviously not a good idea to do this when a sales assistant is watching! Now release the fabric and see how well the creases fall out. My advice is, if the creases are still severe, don't touch it with a bargepole unless you want to spend all your time ironing it. However, you personally may like a crumpled look.

Quality fibres cost money to produce, so you are unlikely to find them cheap - if you find, for instance, 'cashmere' going cheap, be wary - the move to place cashmere in every high street shop has resulted in a huge drop in quality but the good stuff still costs an arm and a leg. So remember the adage: "When you buy quality, you only wince once."

Some common fibres and their price points:

Cashmere £££££

Pashmina £££££

Alpaca £££££

Vicuna £££££

Camelhair £££££

Egyptian cotton ££££

Merino wool ££££

Linen ££££

Hemp £££ (due to low amount of production)

Shetland £££

Tana lawn £££

Lambswool £££ - ££

Microfibre ££ 

Pure new wool (a blend of different wools) ££

Wool (re-used wool from unspecified sources) £

Cotton (unspecified sources, probably India) £

Viscose £

Nylon £

Polyester £

My latest Wall purchase arrived today, back-ordered from a batch of things I picked up recently. 

I bought the same dress from fave company Wall London a month ago in dark red and when it arrived, I liked it so much I logged straight back on and got it in this blue-grey shade. This is one of my signature colours - almost the exact colour of my eyes (and as we all know, don't we girls, a third of your wardrobe should be in your eye colour).  

I love this dress for several reasons. First and foremost, as must immediately strike any over-40s babe, it's got SLEEVES. Why don't more manufacturers offer dresses with sleeves? Well, cost, mainly. It takes quite a lot of fabric to make the average sleeve because of the depth of the armscye (the bit that goes in your armpit). If you ever have the chance to make your own clothes, the shape of what you might have thought was a tube might come as rather a surprise - it's far wider at the shoulder end than you might imagine, so costs the manufacturer about an extra two yards of fabric per garment (for a long sleeve) - all of which cost will be passed onto you, the customer. 

The second reason I love this dress is the massive cowl. It is just huge, like something off a monk's habit, which makes it drape in an extremely flattering way. Cowls by other manufacturers no longer suffice - for me, it has to be Wall. As you can see, it's almost the width of the shoulders on this garment - a very very generous cut, and its weight means you can drape it wide, long and narrow, let it fall to the back or even pull it up over your head. 

The third reason is the smooth, thick, heavy cotton jersey fabric - hand-picked long-staple Pima cotton from Peru, cultivated in Fair Trade conditions, with a proportion of the profits going back to benefit the producers. And because it's cotton, it's easy to wash at home, and there's no ironing involved, thus cutting my carbon footprint massively.

And the fourth reason is the cut, with its elegant fall at the sides and flattering waist seam, and a skirt length and width that enables me to sit cross-legged, or with my legs in front of me without feeling self-conscious. 

I have never been disappointed with a garment from Wall. They are beautiful, classic, slightly unusual and arty clothes for women with brains as well as bodies.

As I negotiate what sometimes feels increasingly like a fashion minefield of garments that are unsuitable because they are too short, or sleeveless, or frumpy, or badly cut, Wall stands like a beacon of elegance that gives me hope that as I trundle towards 50 and beyond, I might actually still be able to find something to wear. 

I was having an email conversation with Wall London the other day and they have pointed me at a couple of dresses from their new summer catalogue, which isn't out for a couple of weeks yet. Check them out - the Jessica in both long and short, with interesting cut-outs at the neckline. These have my name written all over them. 

The reason we were in touch was I'd received my first haul of clothes from the company on Thursday and worn the first of the new dresses - the 'Pirouette' dress in the red umber colourway - out to our monthly book club meeting.

This strong red is new for me - in the days when I had dyed black hair, I could wear scarlet, but since returning to my natural blonde, I normally stick to 'spring' shades like baby pink and baby blue. But both the colour and the dress itself garnered a lot of compliments, even from my normally immune husband, who said I looked 'very elegant'.  

I loved the actual wearing of the dress too: heavy, swirling, substantial jersey with a great drape, a comfortable and becoming cut, pockets (thank you Wall) and a draping cowl neck that not only flatters my substantial bustline (to my surprise - I always think of cowls as too bulky but this one is deep and fluid) but can also be worn as a hood, Valentina-style. This will be in my wardrobe until it falls to bits.

I logged back onto Wall to get it again in grey (a choice I'd only subsituted for the red at the last minute) but sadly it was no longer available, but I did buy the Lantern dress in black, along with a skirt (in teal) and cowl-neck top that I hope will go together to make an outfit.

Then I emailed the company and suggested a few ideas about their range: that it would be nice to see the Lantern and the Pirouette again next winter, in different shades; that the Issy dress would be great with sleeves for winter; that the cowl neck top might also work well as a longer tunic; that the pleat-front dress would also be nice in a longer length; that the gored dress - on me - was too wide at the neck and showed my bra straps so would be better with a v-neck, and that pockets on any dress are very welcome.  

To my surprise, they emailed back to say thanks for the feedback and also for the coverage on this blog, and so we fell into a short exchange of emails whereby my ideas are being referred up to design level (and one or two, they'd already put into production, oddly enough, so we are clearly on the same wavelengh). Well ooh err.

It's nice to get such responsiveness from a company and it also serves to remind that it's a two-way street. Companies need feedback from us too, and the more that we do that, the better are our chances of actually getting the kind of goods that we want.  

Temperatures are back to 'normal' in France the past couple of days - a bit lower than normal, actually - but we had been basking in a heatwave for a while this past week or so.

Thirty-degree heat for days on end gave me the opportunity to rediscover the delights of wearing yukata.

Yukata are a form of Japanese kimono that are worn as bathrobes, sometimes for sleeping, and for casual wear in spa resorts and at the coast. Made usually from cotton, though sometimes hemp, and often in the colourway blue and white, they are the most wonderful, comfortable, airy garments you could imagine. Japan has a hot, humid climate in summer and the Japanese know a thing or two about how to keep cool.

I have a sizeable collection of vintage kimono, but until now, only two yukata - one in polycotton, a gift from a friend, and the one shown above, in a cotton 'ro' - a fabric woven with thousands of tiny holes that look like hemstitching and allow air to pass right through (see bottom picture).

Having lived in these for a couple of days, along with a silk ro kimono that was almost equally cool, I splashed out on three new ones - two worn vintage and one overstock from a shop clearance. I've always wanted a yellow yukata (the one above was 10 dollars); the floral one below (four dollars) is just gorgeous and has these lovely curved sleeves, and the stencilled one (99 cents) is in cotton Ro for maximum coolth. 

One of the reasons yukata are so comfortable in the heat is that - as with all genuine women's kimono - they are open under the arms. From where the sleeve meets the side body, the body is open for about eight inches, and the back of the sleeve is also open to the wrist. This is to prevent the kimono from binding when you wear a deep obi sash, but it also allows the free passage of air where you would otherwise be the most sweaty.

Kimono are traditionally worn wrapped left over right (in Japan, only corpses wear them wrapped right over left), but since I'm a westerner I feel no need to uphold tradition in this way, and I wrap mine right over left because it feels more natural to me. I hitch up the overlength, sash it with a narrow cord around the waist, drape the rest freely around the hips and sash it closed around the waist with a long silk scarf. I close the neckline with a brooch.  

The kimono at right, with the long sleeves is a different kind of summer kimono - silk gauze, known as 'sha'. This stiff, transparent, featherweight silk stands away from the body rather like silk organza, so it feels like you're wearing nothing at all. Sha silk kimono are far more formal than cotton yukata, and in Japan would always be worn over an underkimono, but since I work from home, I wear mine as yukata. Nothing is more comfortable when you're working at a desk all day. 

You might think that the sleeves of kimono would get in the way, but personally I don't find this. The shorter, curved sleeves stay out of the way, while the longer sleeves can be tucked into the side body when you're working, or tied back with a cord.

The big surprise is to see how addicted the DH has now become to kimono. Back in the winter I suggested that he wear a wool 'juban' - a kind of underkimono - as a top layer, and he found it so comfortable that he now practically lives in it, swishing around the house from morning to night. So I've just ordered him a yukata as well - this 1950s number in splashy cotton.  Note the different shape of the sleeves - indicating a man's style. The side body and sleeve are also closed, for those of you who prefer to be more covered up.