Trust · independence
Editorial & Affiliate Standards
How we make money
Staple Cut earns commissions when you buy through some of our links. That is the whole model — no sponsored posts, no paid placements, no inventory of our own — and it funds the research. It does not decide the verdicts.
Straight disclosure —Some links on this page are affiliate links — we may earn a commission when you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. It never changes the price you pay, and it never changes a verdict.
Commissions never buy a verdict
A higher commission cannot move a brand up a ranking, and no brand can pay for a review, a placement, or a score. The bar is the same for everyone: we grade on published fabric weight, construction, sizing consensus, and cost per wear — and an affiliate whose spec sheet does not hold up gets the same treatment as a stranger's. We also cover brands that pay us nothing, under nominative use, because reader-useful coverage is the product. When the honest answer is "skip this one," the page says that, commission or not.
No invented credentials, no invented testing
Our writers are researchers and editors. They hold no textile, tailoring, or industry credentials — and we never invent any. Bylines describe what a person actually does here: reads the published fabric weights and compositions, cross-checks size charts against broad public consensus, recomputes cost per wear, and cites the source. Reviews are desk-verified from published material; we never claim to have worn the clothes. Read who they are on the team page.
No wear-testing, no gatekeeping, no invented numbers
Three lines we hold on every page. First: we never fabricate wear-testing — no "we wore it for a month," because we didn't; durability is described from published care specs and broad consensus. Second: no body-type gatekeeping or appearance-shaming, and no "people will notice" framing — we report what a staple is, not who should wear it. Third: no fake scarcity or manufactured urgency, and no invented durability numbers — an unpublished spec is reported as "not published," never guessed.
Sizing is labeled consensus, not a fitting
When a review says a piece runs large or small, that is a read of the published size chart against a broad body of public reviews — labeled as consensus, never presented as our own fitting or wear-testing. Fit is personal, so we point you to the measurements and the cost-per-wear calculator rather than promising a fit. None of it guarantees a garment will fit your body — only the size chart and your own measurements can do that.
Corrections & freshness
Brands change fabrics, listings reprice, and we get things wrong sometimes. When we update a page, the date you see reflects a real change — we do not stamp a fresh year on stale work to game a feed. Spot an error, a spec that changed, or a price we missed? Tell us and we will fix it.
Claim accuracy
Facts about a product are verified against the brand's live listing at write time; where something is not published, the review says "not published" instead of filling the gap. Prices are quoted at a checked analysis date, fabric weights and compositions are attributed to the published spec, and marketing claims we push back on are quoted to be corrected — clearly, so the correction cannot be mistaken for the claim.
How we actually review is documented on our methodology page.