What do drag lines mean? Reading creases on a kameez

The four directions

Tight lines are sharp and straight, and they vanish if you pinch the fabric looser. Loose folds are soft: you can smooth them away with your hand and they fall straight back.

• Tight lines across the body: the garment is too narrow at that level. The fabric is stretched round you and creases under tension.
• Loose folds running up and down: it is too wide there. Spare fabric has nowhere to go and hangs in soft vertical folds.
• Loose folds lying across, like a sagging shelf: it is too long between two points, so the extra length slumps.
• Diagonal lines: the fabric is being dragged from where it should lie towards a spot that is short of room or length. Follow the line to its tighter end and you have usually found the cause.

Reading a kameez, place by place

• Bust: creases fanning from the fullest point towards the armhole or side seam say the front needs more room and length there. The remedy is in why a kameez pulls across the bust.
• Hips: horizontal ridges across the hips, with side slits that pull open while you stand, mean the kameez is too narrow at the hip or the slits start too low.
• Small of the back: folds stacking up above the hips mean the kameez is catching on the hips and riding up, or the back of it is longer than your back.
• Upper back: lines pulling between the armholes when you reach forward mean the back is too narrow, whatever the bust measures.
• Neck to underarm: a diagonal fold on each side is the mark of sloping shoulders in a kameez cut for squarer ones.
• Upper sleeve: rings round the arm mean the sleeve is too tight. A spiral means the sleeve is turning, which we cover in why sleeves twist.
• Trousers: creases radiating from the crotch towards the hips mean too little room in the seat or the rise.

How to check your own clothes

Stand the way you normally stand, in daylight, in the underlayers you would usually wear, and do not smooth anything down first. Look from the front, then side-on, then take a phone photo of the back. Photos beat a mirror here, because you cannot hold a natural posture while twisting round to look.

Not every crease is a fault. Gathers, pleats and draped cuts are folds put there on purpose. Creases at the elbow and across the lap after sitting come from wear, and soft fabrics such as lawn and viscose show every small fold while firmer cloth hides more; our article on how fabric changes fit and drape explains why. A line counts as a drag line when it is there every time you stand still in that garment.

Using what you see when you order

You do not need the technical name for anything. Tell us where the lines appear in clothes you own, in your own words, and add photos if you can: “creases point from my bust to the armhole”, “folds collect above my hips at the back”. Then give the measurement for the place the lines point to. The page on body and garment measurements explains the two kinds of number.

In a made-to-measure order those notes sit beside your measurements, and both are agreed in writing before cutting. Custom stitching describes the service, and the quote form has a notes box for exactly this.