Is Uniqlo Good Quality? My 2¢ & Why I Think This Is

Let me start out by saying, I'm not a quality snob.

I don't mean this in a derogatory way, I mean to say that there are some people who can seemingly sniff out when something isn't good quality, and those are the people I look to when I want help sussing out whether a purchase is worthy.

My husband, Thomas, is absolutely one of these people. He's tried to teach me a thing or two over the years, and while I wouldn't say I'm hopeless, I will say I still don't have a good eye for quality. I've come a long way from where I started, however.

Uniqlo quality is something he's been harping on about since I first met him, long before I'd ever set foot in or purchased a piece from Uniqlo before.

And while the quality of many brands has gone downhill, he's never had a bad thing to say about Uniqlo's quality in all the years we've been together and have purchased countless pieces from them.

So if you're asking for his opinion, while I'd say you should ask him for the details, the general overview is, Uniqlo clothes are definitely Thomas approved.

Stating this - I know he'd harp on about how I have to add a qualifier here, so here's to the mandatory blurb: Uniqlo is good quality, but for it's price point.

You can absolutely find much, much, better quality clothing, but at what cost?

The answer is - pretty high. In comparison to most everything in it's price point, which is relatively low, Uniqlo is almost certainly much higher quality.

I've heard the rant before so many times I absolutely needed to repeat that qualifying statement, and it makes sense that it has to be said, but I feel it's somewhat implied in the question.

Usually when people ask if something is good quality, to an extent, they're asking if it's worth the money, value-wise, and if it's good quality at that price point.

In case that's not what you meant, and you just meant to ask are these the best quality clothes imaginable - no they are not. But they are excellent for their pricepoint and Uniqlo clothes normally far exceed the quality of similarly priced items.

When it comes to the quality snobs that surround me in life, hell even the hyper-picky vintage clothing lovers who complain attire is no longer being made the way it used to be made (it isn't, so who can blame them for complaining?), I've never met one with an issue buying at Uniqlo.

Make of that what you will.

This is especially true when it comes to their merino wool sweaters, though to be honest, anything with a Uniqlo stamp has pretty much common acceptance as probably the best you can buy if you're going with fast-fashion brands.

In my personal experience, you can tell the difference in quality even if you're not an expert, in the way that these items wear over time. They do seem to last longer.

They look better, cleaner - with less loose threads and sloppy finish - than most other fast fashion brands' clothing.

The one place I think Uniqlo doesn't stand out to me is in terms of the cuts of their clothing, which results in the fact that a lot of their items make me look frumpy, but there are particular staple pieces (these) that don't make me look frumpy ever, so I stick to those and venture to try new styles only every so often to experiment (I buy online and never return because it's too much work).

If you look great in their cuts and are just wondering if they're good quality items - yes, go for it. If you are trying them out for the first time, I'd say try a variety of styles to see what suits you and splash out on getting different colours when you find what suits you.

They don't have too many styles, so you can try the bulk of them in a year or two, and the next time the season you want rolls around, chances are high the same piece you loved on you last year will be back in new colours.

The fact that they don't have a lot of styles is likely a huge part of the reason why they are higher quality.

It's harder for fast fashion brands like Zara and H&M to concentrate on quality when they produce such a huge plethora of styles.

When you concentrate on a small number of styles and have a tiny selection by comparison like Uniqlo does, I'd imagine that's what makes it at all possible to make sure quality is high.

If you concentrate on a very small (by comparison) number of styles, with the same patterns and the same fabrics year in year out, only having to change the colour of the fabric or dyes when you do a run, it makes a lot more sense that you can concentrate your efforts on better quality materials and better finishes than if you have a massive number of different styles, each in only a small number of colours.

In my head, it's the same as if you had a restaurant that only offered pizzas, but with different toppings (Uniqlo) versus a restaurant that had a large number of food options, pizza being only one of them (Zara types of fast fashion stores).

It's more likely a pizza place that only offers pizzas has great pizzas because they can concentrate on perfecting the ingredients they use, that are in common between all their food offerings.

They can spend more on good quality dough, for example, because they don't have to worry about the fact that people may order pasta instead of pizza, making spending money on better dough pointless an expensive that day.

Maybe not the best way of explaining it, but I hope you see what I mean!

Less offerings, less overhead for waste, more optimization in terms of being able to boost quality because the costs of switching up the system to pump out different styles is not there. That's the jist of it, and why I think Uniqlo's quality is good, albeit the low price point.