Chadwick's

Full review
I've been a customer of Chadwick's since the late 1990s, when I was a starving seminary student looking for professional clothes that wouldn't blow my budget. Up until a few years ago, my experiences with this company were entirely positive. I could order items in the same size I buy in retail stores, and *know* that they would fit. The fabric quality was equal to what I expected to find in department stores (I still wear one of the wool skirts), and the selection was frequently better than retail, especially in petites. I don't think I sent a single item from that time period back, or had to wait for a backorder to be filled.

Four years ago, I returned to school to get an advanced degree and again turned to Chadwick's to update my professional wardrobe. The experience this time has left me wondering if I'm dealing with the same company. I've found that products don't always match their description: a dress that was advertised as having a back zipper arrived with a side zipper instead (and so would have been more expensive to alter for narrow shoulders), pants that were described as "warm wool flannel" with an "above the waist" fit were actually tissue-thin and sat 2 inches below my belly button. Sometimes the discrepancies are obvious from the catalog pictures--I've seen several shirts and sweaters with sleeves all the way to the wrist or above the elbow described as "3/4 sleeve," possibly because that's the trendy sleeve length. It makes me wonder if the people who write the descriptions have ever seen the items, or if they're working from a list of stock fashion terms that marketing has given to them. Fit and quality are also inconsistent now. Within the last six months or so, Chadwick's has enabled customer reviews of products on their website, and I've noticed several recurring complaints: fabric too thin, bust too small, sleeves/armholes too tight, waist (in dresses) too short, especially in petites. Sometimes reviewers have contradictory experiences with products; for example, one dress I considered ordering was described by several reviewers as having a polyester lining, but by a few others as having a cotton lining, and by one reviewer (who was happy!) as having no lining at all. It's as if Chadwick's now sells its own "knock-off" brands. I think they must be using many different manufacturers to produce the same items, and some of the manufacturers use substandard fabrics or construction techniques. The trouble is, there's obviously no quality control being down to make sure that all the manufacturers produce acceptable (or even identical) garments, and ordering has become a real crapshoot--if you're lucky, you'll get an item from one of their better, and possibly original, manufacturers, but if you're not, you'll be paying for S&H to send it back, and for the original S&H, since they don't refund that. I've returned about half or 2/3 of the items I've ordered in the last several years, and have lost track of how much I've lost in shipping fees.

Having said all this, I've found that some items are more consistent than others, and are still a fairly safe bet, although the customer reviews suggest that these, too, are being made by multiple manufacturers. So if you feel like gambling, here's my advice for minimizing your chances of having a bad shopping experience at Chadwick's:

1) Stick to the button down shirts, long moleskin skirts, and anything with the "J G Hook" label.
2) Read all the customer reviews carefully. If you notice a pattern (multiple reviewers noting that a particular aspect of sizing is off, for example), take it seriously before you decide to gamble with $12 or more in S&H fees both ways.
3) If your shopping cart indicates that an item is on backorder, remove it! Since I've been ordering again, I think I've only received one backordered item. Most get delayed multiple times before Chadwick's decides that they are out of stock and cancels your order.
4) Be prepared to iron your items when they arrive, and to make some small repairs like sewing loose buttons back on. Also, check your shipment against the invoice when it arrives. I once received a pair of pants that were listed on the invoice and on the plastic wrapper as the size I ordered, but the tag inside the waistband said otherwise. Call customer service if they have made a mistake, be polite but not naive, and you they *should* do the right thing by you. I haven't had the nightmares that others have described, thankfully.

Good luck!

Update (5/28/09): questionable sales tactics
Recently, I received a "sale" catalog from Chadwick's.  I've had my eye on a jacket that was selling for $39.99 in previous catalogs, so I flipped through the "sale" catalog to see if it had been reduced.  Surprise!  The jacket is still selling for $39.99, but that price is being billed as a "sale" price, reduced from $49.99.  I flipped through my old catalogs and discovered that Chadwick's never sold the jacket for $49.99--it has always sold for $39.99, with a "compare at" value of $49.99.  "Compare at" suggests to me that this is the price I could expect to pay elsewhere for the same item, not that Chadwick's has reduced a previous price.  And the jacket is just one example; I compared the prices for other items and found that in all cases, the "was" price was the "compare at" price from a previous catalog, and the "now" price was the original Chadwick's price.  My e-mail to the company got no response, so I filed a consumer complaint with the FTC (https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/).  Also, Chadwick's is getting stingy with coupons.  "50% off your second item," for example, got you 50% off the more expensive item in your cart just last year.  Not anymore!  Now you get your least expensive item for 50% off.  Chadwick's has also requested that user-updated coupon sites like retailmenot.com remove all discount codes from their databases.