Valuable Fabrics You Should Know As A Clothing Reseller

this is a guide to the most common fabrics that you're going to find that add value to a clothing piece if you're looking for stuff at a thrift store or wherever you source to resell online these are the fabrics that confer additional value above and beyond just standard cotton or polyester or nylon fabrics that you might find in the majority of pieces we're going to start with leathers leather in and of itself does not necessarily mean value so most leather is cow leather and there are plenty of leather jackets and leather lots of other stuff that are worth basically nothing leather from bigger brands leather that's not in very good condition is not necessarily worth picking up simply because it is leather however there are kinds of leather that typically do confer additional value and should give you reason to take a second and close look at a piece if you find it calf leather is a good example calves obviously are baby cows pretty macabre but calf leather is softer finer leather typically and is more sought after i've found it more in women's clothing than i have in men's clothing calf leather obviously tends to be more expensive when you bite retail because it's more horrifying and therefore harder to produce lamb leather is pretty similar to calf leather lamb leather obviously cute little baby sheep that get turned into jackets and pants lamb leather in my experience is just as soft or softer than calf leather and i have found it more than i have found calf leather and just like half leather found it more in women's clothing than in men's ostrich leather is interesting i've only found it in shoes i think they make ostrich leather jackets but i've never seen one ostrich shoes can be differentiated from other kinds of leather shoes because they have raised bumps on the leather almost like pimples not all ostrich leather shoes are worth money but a lot of them are it is a more rare kind of leather suede also is worth a mention suede is a rougher kind of leather you find it in jackets and pants chaps find it in shoes a lot i have a pair of suede shoes that i love suede again can be worth nothing if it's an unknown completely unknown brand if the condition isn't there but suede in the right sort of piece can be worth quite a bit an important a really important point to make with leather in general is faux leather or pleather is never going to be worth as much as genuine leather in a comparable piece in the same brand however a faux leather piece from gucci is going to be worth more than a genuine leather piece from wilson's so simply because it is faux leather doesn't mean that it is valueless but be very careful with faux leather especially if it's missing the material tag or if you can't tell if it's genuine leather this is one area where it's very good to develop both a feel and an eye for what constitutes genuine leather versus fake leather a good tip is to look if you can at parts of the leather that have been cut so the seams sleeves if the if it's a single ply of fabric of leather fabric that hasn't been folded in and stitched if you can see where it was actually cut you can kind of develop an eye pretty clearly for what is synthetic and what is genuine leather and after a while you can you can trust your your fingers but it is trickier than it should be sometimes a category right next to leather is skins animal skins the two that i'm going to discuss here are gator skin and snake skin important here also to be able to differentiate between authentic and fake pleather or whatever the terminology is snake skin and gator skin not worth nearly as much and this should be pretty easy i mean it's it it if it looks real it feels really real it's gonna feel and look pretty different than than plastic or vinyl condition here really matters so i don't think i've ever ever actually found real gator skin i have found some snake skin pieces especially footwear which is where you're gonna find most gator skin and snake skin is in shoes and boots i found some snakeskin stuff that was in pretty poor condition and if that's the case unless it's a knockout brand i'm not even going to bother so make sure that it's actually adhering to the shoe or the jacket and not in tatters but if it's real it's probably worth money and if it's in good condition it's probably worth money on both counts let's move into wool so there's all sorts of of wool and wool here i'm defining as sheep wool with one exception that i'll get into i would say wool is the the most common value add fabric that you're gonna find almost every brand makes something in wool and wool tends as a rule of thumb to be worth a little bit more than average wool blends definitely less desirable than 100 wool in terms of resale i personally prefer wool blend simply because it's more comfortable to wear but 100 wool will hold more value doesn't mean that wool blend will not hold value hold value especially if it's cashmere blend but just straight wool blend from basic brands like the gap or old navy or h m not necessarily going to be worth that much may not even be worth picking up depending on seasonality and price and all the other factors that we have to consider so 100 percent wall pieces are typically worth picking up if the price is right even from those bad brands relatively bad brands i've had great luck with 100 wool j crew a 100 wool banana republic 100 percent will express all the kind of garbage tier brands like mall brands 100 wool stuff will typically sell and i'm not talking about merino wool which is kind of a differentiation that needs to be made so merino wool is a particular kind of long fiber wool that's very fine and very soft it's not as fine and soft as cashmere but it's more fine and more soft than just wool so merino wool pieces you would think would be worth more money but a lot of times they're not a merino 100 merino wool sweater from let's say old navy is probably going to be worth more money than a standard wool blend sweater from old navy the merino wool sweater may not necessarily be worth all that much because merino wool is pretty common you can get it at costco you can get it at basically any mall brand store there are kinds of wool that are definitely worth above average more than merino wool and just standard wool wool cashmere let's start there since i've already brought it up cashmere is the finest wool um just in terms of the quality the softness the desirability of the wool it's kind of top of the heap and you find it pretty commonly when you're looking for it kind of like calf and lamb leather i do tend to find it more in women's clothing than i do in men's but if you can find cashmere in men's definitely give it a look so 100 cashmere is what you want cashmere blends can be worth it if the cashmere count is really low you'll find pieces from like a banana republic that'll contain five percent cashmere the utility there really is just being able to get away with putting the cashmere keyword in the title five ten percent cashmere stuff not necessarily going to be worth all that much 30 cashmere and up then you know we're starting to talk about some significant value add high cashmere content blends like 70 cashmere 30 polyester or cotton or whatever that is getting into the ballpark of genuine cashmere pieces and 100 cashmere is pretty much universally valuable i would say 100 cashmere pieces are worth picking up regardless of brand i've said this in other videos before if the price is right uh worth noting about all wool especially cashmere is screen it hard for holes and screen by holding it up to light stretching the fabric out reasonably without distending it and looking for little pinholes because most of the time you're going to find holes i have gotten a really interesting tip a few times from viewers in the comments saying that if you do find cashmere pieces 100 cashmere pieces with holes if you're able to get them for really really cheap if you bring it up with the cashier and say this has a hole in it give it to me for a dollar if you can accumulate a little stack of those pieces you can sell them in a lot as crafting fabric and people will pay up for it so if you can get it for really dirt cheap and then bundle it up and then sell it advertise as having flaws that people can harvest sections of intact cashmere from that is apparently a good way to make money i've never done it personally but intuitively that strikes me as something that's totally real and something that i plan to implement when i start thrifting again so cashmere 100 cashmere suits sport coats blazers are especially worth being on the lookout for especially in really desirable brands like a laura piana 100 cashmere that's a hole-in-one that is a great piece that's worth paying up for um and the the suit section in general doesn't really get picked over that much people avoid the suits people don't want to deal with suits people don't buy suits for themselves so you're not that unlikely to find cashmere suits and jackets in the section it is rare but it's less rare than you think and i've gotten pretty lucky over the years finding 100 cashmere evening wear and suits and cashmere is another one of those fabrics that you can develop a feel for and an eye for so if you're looking through stuff you can just you can tell after a while that it is cashmere i know that some people claim that they can walk down a row of clothing in a thrift than just feel with their hand for cashmere and i don't think i'm that good but it's worth mentioning there's a kind of wall that i love finding called shetland wool that i believe is scottish i found it mostly in j crew for whatever reason but shetland wool pieces are i think i i don't know i haven't looked at the sell-through rate but i figure it's probably pretty high and it goes for pretty good money shetland wool pieces i've never had a problem selling and they've all sold for more than equivalent 100 standard wool pieces um mongolian wool i have found in suits and jackets only i've never found a sweater i don't know if they make mongolian wool sweaters but it's pretty rare pretty niche and pretty pricey so if you find a mongolian wool piece and a desirable brand probably worth picking up or certainly worth considering picking up lambswool it's another one that i find pretty often and for whatever reason i find it mostly in j crew doesn't feel to my fingers like it's actually higher quality or finer or softer than standard wool but it is more desirable there's two i guess weeds or or wool fabrics that are worth looking out for one is genuine wool flannel typically this will be vintage wool flannel shirts are great sellers if it's a good brand this is one of those pieces that you might be able to get away with selling even if it has holes in it like if it's a vintage pendleton pure wool shirt like a flannel plaid shirt those are great sellers i also want to mention tweed you will find it in sport coats and blazers for the most part it is really thick it's pretty bristly and it's typically vintage and a lot of the times it is worth money the most well-known to me at least tweed is harris tweed which is a brand that makes uh sport coats and blazers and i've had good luck with tweed i am including mohair in in the wool category even though it comes from a goat the angora goat just because it's so close to wool it's like a really fuzzy wool and it's also pretty coarse like long hair coarse wool um that in the right brands can confer value moving out of wool i want to talk about other hair based animal hair based organic fabrics that are like wool angora is synonymous with rabbit hair sometimes you'll see it listed as rabbit sometimes angora they mean the same thing it is really fuzzy long haired soft fabric it's really soft it's softer than cashmere it is another one of those fabrics that is more popular in women's clothing than in men's but you do find it in men's for the most part you find it in blends you find it blended with wool cashmere cotton silk um if it's like cashmere if the the angora content is relatively high in that blend so if it's like 20 30 percent angora then it becomes more genuinely an angora piece and be will be worth a little bit more if it's blended with more common fabrics like cotton a hundred percent angora pieces i don't know that i've ever found one in men's if i did find it i would probably pick it up alpaca is another great fabric to be on the lookout for it's one that i only find in or have found in outerwear so sport coats jackets that kind of stuff never found a shirt made of alpaca they do make beanies alpaca beanies and hats fairly commonly and those are going to be worth more money i don't know why people like alpaca because if it gets wet it smells like diarrhea i swear i'm not making that up but people people like it it is worth money so look out for alpaca this next one none of us will probably ever find in our lifetime certainly not if we're thrifting it's vicuna which is an andean relative of the alpaca and the llama and it is apparently the most expensive fabric in the world it's the most sought after rarest highest value fabric in the world if you want your mind blown do a search on ebay solds for vicuna v-i-c-u-n-a um technically it's supposed to have the n-a i think pieces sell for north of three grand all the time and if you ever find it and it's real probably just get it much more common is camel you will find camel mostly in sport coats i think they probably make slash have made 100 camel hair suits but i've only ever found it in jackets and sport coats and blazers and camel's interesting because you can spot it from a mile away it's almost always natural camel color which is a very specific shade of tan and it pops right out of the suit section at you camel hair pieces tend to deteriorate badly with age in my experience so if you find camel most of the time it's going to have something wrong most of the time for whatever reason it's on the cuffs so look for bald spots on the fabric look for stains very uncommon to find a camel hair piece that doesn't have something wrong with it if the brand is right you might be able to get away with it if the brand is right and the piece is in really good condition without flaws it can be worth quite a bit of money this next one isn't a fabric it's a fill it's goose down something that you'll find in parkas and puffer jackets goose down if it's 80 percent or up sometimes you'll find 80 percent goose down and 20 feathers is worth picking up for the most part it definitely confers a lot of value 100 goose down fill from a good brand is a universal buy in my my opinion having just run all the numbers for the menswear manifesto or done so fairly recently this popped up again and again and again and again in most high dollar brands some of the most valuable pieces consistently are goose down parkas goose down puffer jackets goose down puffer vests goose down whatever hundreds hundreds hundreds of dollars sometimes thousands of dollars if you just find a goose down puffer vest from the gap it's not going to be worth hundreds of dollars but it's probably worth 50. so goose down stuff is another one that you can actually develop a tactile feel for if you squeeze the piece you can tell if it's feathers and you can tell if it's just nylon or polyester fill nylon or polyester fill it's just gonna if you rub it like this it's gonna be completely frictionless and if it's feathers you're gonna be able to feel the stems that are gonna be really stiff and thick goose down is more textured you can feel the stems but they're soft and pliable stems after time after a while you'll be able to tell the difference just by squeezing and you obviously have to verify by looking at the material tag goose down stuff even from bad brands probably worth it other organic fabrics that confer value linen leaves to mind linen is made from flax and it's very breathable it is stiffer and heavier than cotton but it's naturally very breathable and i think it's moisture wicking and during warmer months it's in pretty high demand 100 linen shirts even from pretty trashy brands can be good sellers i've had good luck historically with 100 linen j crew although j crew has definitely fallen from grace so if you find 100 linen even in a kind of bad brand then probably run the numbers but 100 linen pieces and desirable brands can be worth quite a bit more money than just cotton baird mcnutt linen you will find a lot and that is in fairly high demand although i haven't run the numbers you can also find pure linen pieces in suits sport coats jackets blazers and especially in summer months the unstructured linen blazer gets promoted heavily across all of the the men's fashion advice channels or at least it was in the past couple years and i assume it's going to be the same story here so an unstructured blazer is a blazer or jacket or whatever that doesn't have any structure so it's not reinforced in the shoulders or in the back it doesn't have panels on the front underneath the fabric so it's just kind of flowy and you it wears more like a shirt than a jacket and those have been very very popular and i've only found those a few times i found one from untuck it that did quite well so if you find a hundred percent linear 100 percent linen unstructured blazers my guess is that those are going to be in very high demand even in light of the fact that dressier stuff has taken a big hit because of covid silk is an interesting one there's a couple different kinds of silk there's the flowy smooth silk that you see in disco shirts and neckties there's also the the rougher more textured pure silk that i guess is more less processed than that other silk and both of them you do find again more in women's clothing than you do in men's clothing but 100 silk stuff can definitely be worth money silk blends same as with all the other valuable fabrics if it's low silk content might mean nothing if it's a little bit higher it might be more desirable but silk tends not to be worth all that much in comparison to some of these other fabrics silk is pretty commonly found even in in run-of-the-mill brands like banana republic i see silk blend all the time so silk necktie is also pretty common the right piece can be worth it disco shirts from the 70s can be uh pretty good sellers especially if they have really outlandish patterns and if they're 100 silk then they can be worth money uh famously tommy bahama 100 silk shirts have been claimed to be great sellers by people even people whose opinions i trust so that's something to consider i personally think tommy bahama silk shirts are overrated mileage varies i want to talk about different kinds of cotton cotton is the cotton and polyester are the two most commonly used fabrics just just plain jane cotton who cares but there's a few kinds of cotton to know about denim is pretty obvious denim is a heavy cotton fabric 100 cotton denim especially vintage i think it's worth a little bit more than cotton mixed with spandex and polyester although if the brand is right who cares denim jackets as i've talked about multiple times on this channel if it's the right kind of jacket from the right brands can be worth great money chambray fabric is very close to denim but is not denim and knowing the difference can be worth it i made a really short video in the long long ago on this channel about telling the difference and a couple of people said that it wasn't fully accurate but in my experience it's a pretty good rule of thumb so the difference between denim and chambray is if you flip the chambray fabric over to the back side it will usually be the same the same hue as the front and if you if you do the same with denim it's lighter so i happen to have a pair of of jeans here this is pretty light wash you might be able to not be able to see it but this isn't is a darker shade than the interior here that tends to be the case with denim apparently it's not always the case but that served me pretty well chambray also has a little bit of a different tactile feel than denim it's a little bit less of a twill fabric it's um and it's more i've actually worn chambray shirts in these videos before it's hard to put into words but it's good to be able to eyeball the difference chambray is something that people do search for specifically because it's considered a more breathable fabric than just pure cotton shirts it's a little bit dressier people like to wear it to the office or at least they did before the world ended so not all chambray is worth a ton it's kind of like flannel not all flannel shirts are worth a lot of money not all chambray shirts are worth a lot of money but it's a good way to narrow down those search results and get more eyes on your piece pima cotton is a kind of cotton that is higher quality for whatever reason i don't know why i didn't read the wikipedia article so please feel free to post the equivalent in length in a comment down below about where pima cotton comes from pima cotton you will find mostly in polo shirts and 100 pima cotton is a good thing to be on the lookout for it's not a total slam dunk but it does confer a little bit more value and if i found a pima cotton shirt and a less desirable brand like a gap like a banana republic i would still consider picking it up whereas i would not in a 100 standard cotton you'll find it a lot in travis matthew you'll find it in a lot of golf polos i think i think peter millar does a lot of pima cotton you have to look a lot of the time on the actual material tag for the pima sometimes it'll say it under the brand tag pima cotton they'll make a big deal out of the fact that it's pima cotton but sometimes you do have to look also waxed cotton can be worth a bit of money in the in the right brand waxed cotton is usually in a canvas or a denim that has natural wax like beeswax or or whatever kind of wax in a thin layer that is meant to waterproof the piece so it's aesthetically pleasing it is more organic than wearing a windbreaker or a rain shell which appeals to people's sense of aesthetics and a lot of it is vintage so if you find waxed cotton like safari jackets those can be worth quite a bit and i will end the list with fabric that i've discussed a few times on this channel it's gore-tex it's the only synthetic fabric on this list it's a waterproof i think nylon fabric that is used commonly in ski wear and rain slickers and shoes and gloves and anything with the gore-tex logo on it is worth picking up if the price is right it's in really high demand prices are very generous and it's something that you will find every once in a while if you're looking for it fabric is not everything just as brand is not everything just a seasonality is not everything just as aesthetics are not everything these are all important variables keep in mind when you're trying to tabulate what is worth picking up and what isn't um this is not a complete list there are many i'm sure that are not included here so i hope that this helps i think it's a good starting point if you're less literate in terms of clothing fabrics than you are with say brand or or whatever so i hope it helps thank you for watching

Channel: Thrift A Life

Views: 4,088

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Keywords: fabric guide, fabrics, ebay clothing, clothing for ebay, thrifting, make money thrifting, make money reselling, reselling, reseller, valuable fabrics, wool, cashmere, leather, selling clothes, selling clothing, flipping clothing

Id: g7eW-XsB9AQ

Length: 28min 1sec (1681 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021