Rank em’: Suit, shoe, and watch construction

Here’s how this works.  Look at the options, pick your order, then leave your rankings in the comments section.  Feel free to explain why you placed what where.  This time around it’s how your suits are made, your shoes are made, and how your watch keeps ticking.  Your favorite, what you value the most, goes #1.
.

Canvassed Suit Jackets

Most affordable (and all cheap) suits are fused.  Fusing is the glue that the maker uses to bind the front piece of the suit jacket to the interior cut of fabric.  Don’t worry, they use something more advanced than Elmer’s, but it’s still not ideal.  It makes for a suit jacket that won’t “drape” or flow over the wearer as well as a canvassed suit.  Also, if dry-cleaned repeatedly, there’s a serious risk of melting the fusing during the process, only to have it regather in goofy looking ridges and wrinkles.  Canvassed suits have an extra floating piece that the exterior and interior of the jacket are stitched to.  Over time, this piece molds to the wearer’s body, making it move much better and feel superior.  They’re not cheap though, and many makers like Indochino and SuitSupply use either a hybrid or “half canvassing”.

 

Stitched/Welted Shoes

Glue also comes into play here.  Most affordable shoes have had their soles glued to the uppers.  Sure plenty of inexpensive shoes look like they’ve got stitching around their edges… but it’s all for show.  Durability can become an issue if they’re worn often and not rotated with other shoes, and when they wear out they wear out.  In automotive terms, this would be like having to replace your car’s wheels when the tires get bald.  Now, that’s not completely fair, because most of us don’t have 10 sets of tires hanging out in our garage.  And like fused suits, PLENTY of us can get by and look better than good with little to no durability problems if we maintain them properly.  But a welted shoe like an Allen Edmonds with their Goodyear welt and terrific re-crafting service is great if you can afford it.

 

Mechanical/Automatic watches

What is art?  Is progress art?  Is starting a fire with flint and steel more virtuous than using a match and lighter fluid?  Are breast implants, um… less appealing than what nature gives a lady?  Lots of convoluted analogies have been applied to the quartz vs. mechanical watch debate and there’s good arguments for each side.  A mechanical or automatic watch doesn’t depend on this newfangled thing known as “electricity” to power it.  It’s incredibly impressive that man figured out how to keep accurate track of time with devices dependent on nothing but springs and gears.  It’s also impressive that man figured out how to get to the friggin’ moon.  Which believe it or not, was what helped start the widespread production of watches that depend on electricity.

Your turn.  What’s most important do you?  Do you drool over canvassed suits?  Will you save up for a shoe with a true welt?  Shun quartz like it’s a carrier of Ebola?  Rankings go below.  Explanations encouraged.  Top photo credit: Tupps