How We Research

Wardrobe Atlas is a small, independent editorial publication. This page explains how our guides and brand reviews are written, where our information comes from, how often we update, and how we correct mistakes.

Who writes the guides

Every guide and brand review on Wardrobe Atlas is written by Alex Carter, the site's founder, author, and editor. Alex is not a fashion designer, a stylist to celebrities, or a representative of any clothing brand. He is a writer who researches clothing by reading labels, comparing construction across brands, checking size charts against real measurements, and wearing pieces through ordinary weeks of work, travel, and laundry before writing about them. Read more about Alex on the About page.

How a guide is written

Research at Wardrobe Atlas follows the same method for every guide, and it is deliberately slow.

• Start with the label, not the marketing. Fibre content, weave, weight, and care instructions tell you more about a garment than its product description does. A label that says 100% cotton behaves differently from one that says 60% cotton and 40% polyester, and the guide explains why.
• Compare across brands and price levels. The same category — jeans, wool sweaters, work trousers — is compared across well-known brands at different prices. The point is never to crown a winner; it is to show how sizing, fabric, and construction vary, so readers can judge any garment on its own merits.
• Check size charts against measurements. A size medium is not a measurement. Wherever possible, Alex checks stated measurements against garment measurements and against how US sizing typically runs, and says plainly when a brand runs small, large, or inconsistently.
• Wear it through ordinary life. A garment that looks good on a hanger and fails on a commute is a bad garment. Research includes wearing pieces through work days, travel, and repeated laundering, because that is where quality shows up — or does not.
• Read the fine print. Return policies, care requirements, and warranty terms are part of the real cost of a garment. A sweater that must be dry-cleaned every time costs more over a year than its price tag suggests.

See the denim fit guide and the fabric guide for worked examples of this method, and the Brands index for reviews written on the same terms.

Information sources

Our information comes from four sources, in this order of importance. First, the garments themselves: labels, fabric, construction, measurements, and wear over time. Second, brands' own published material: size charts, care instructions, fibre content, and product descriptions — used as a source for facts, not as a source for conclusions. Third, public information about brands: company histories, published reporting, and public brand-recognition surveys, used for background and context in our brand reviews, never for invented statistics. Fourth, readers: corrections, fit reports, and questions sent to [email protected], which we check and, where verified, fold into the guides.

We do not invent test results, laboratory data, review scores, star ratings, or sales figures. We do not publish a number unless we can say where it came from. Prices are given only as typical ranges, described with words like "typically" or "around", and dated as of November 2026, because real prices change with sales, seasons, and regions.

How brand reviews are written

Each brand review follows the same structure: brand overview, including origin and positioning; main product lines; strengths; weaknesses; who the brand suits and who it does not suit; typical price ranges; and an editorial verdict in words, not in stars or numbers. The reviews are based on the brand's public history, its product range, and the same fit, fabric, and value method used in our guides. We do not accept free products, payment, or review samples from brands, and no brand reviews a guide or a review before publication.

Images

Wardrobe Atlas uses no brand logos and no product photographs. The photographs on this site are generic category photographs from free stock libraries — Unsplash and Pexels — and from Wikimedia Commons, hosted locally on this site. Each one shows a type of clothing — running shoes, folded jeans, a clothing rack — rather than any brand's product, and no photograph on this site should be read as a photograph of the brand discussed on that page. We do not copy images from brand websites, retailers, or other publishers, and we do not hotlink images from other sites.

Photograph credits: folded jeans — kaboompics, via Pexels; training sneakers — SHVETS production, via Pexels; folded navy polo shirt — Poloshopper, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0); t-shirts on hangers — Matthew Henry, Burst (Creative Commons); yoga in leggings — Elly Fairytale, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0); leather handbag — Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer), Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). The remaining photographs are from Unsplash, whose licence does not require attribution.

Update frequency

Guides are reviewed when the facts behind them change — when a brand changes its sizing, when a fabric technology changes, when a price level shifts, or when readers report an error. As a rule, every guide is re-checked at least once a year, and the publication date on each guide shows when it was last reviewed. The current round of guides was written and updated in November 2026. If a guide's facts become outdated between reviews, we correct it as soon as we know — see the corrections section below.

Corrections

Corrections matter to us. If a guide gets a fact wrong — a fabric blend, a size range, a care instruction, a price range, or a brand's history — we want to know. Email [email protected] with the page, the error, and, if you can, a source we can check. We will verify it, correct the page, and update the date. We do not delete a correction or hide an error: the corrected page is the record.

Editorial independence

Wardrobe Atlas is editorially independent. No brand pays for coverage, no brand reviews a guide before publication, and no brand can buy a favourable mention. The site currently contains no affiliate links whatsoever — there is nothing to click that earns us a commission. If affiliate links are ever added in the future, they will be disclosed at the top of the relevant pages, and they will not affect what we write or recommend. That promise is stated in full in our Affiliate Disclosure and our Editorial Policy. If you have a question about our method, start with the FAQ, or write to [email protected].