Objective Evaluation of the Quality of Ladies' Garment Fabrics

Ladies' garments differ from menswear in that they come in a vast variety of designs and make use of fabrics with greatly varying mechanical properties to compose various silhouettes. Accordingly, there is great difficulty in performing objective fabric quality evaluations of ladies garment than formenswear. Hence quality evaluations have been generally based on the experiences of garment designers and apparel makers. Women's apparel is strongly influenced by trends in color, pattern, fashion and so on, and there are various appraisal standards for the quality of fabrics. Therefore, this research's first aim was to analyze the results of subjective fabric material evaluation conducted by the experts of women's apparel fabrics' manufacture, retail, design, etc., and to make clear those appraisal standards. Next, ladies' garment fabrics were divided into three silhouette types, Tailored Type, Drape Type, and Anti-Drape (Hari) Type, based on the fabrics' basic mechanical properties. We then derived, for each silhouette type, a method for objective evaluation of the quality of fabrics, that is to say the Total Hand Value (THV), which utilizes the fabrics' basic mechanical properties. At the same time, the data evaluation of the objective quality evaluation system has validated it as an effective method for predicting the quality of ladies' garment fabrics.