How many angles should I request for a garment?

The reason four is enough is that garment defects cluster into three families: construction defects along seams, measurement deviations from the stated chart, and variant errors visible on the label. A laid-flat front and back view addresses measurement and silhouette, a close seam shot addresses construction, and the label shot addresses the variant. Anything beyond that is usually a second look at the same information.

Laid flat matters more than it sounds. A garment photographed on a hanger drapes, and drape hides both a measurement deviation and an asymmetric cut. In our review of photo sets, garments photographed on hangers were consistently harder to assess than the same garments photographed flat, to the point where we now treat a hanger-only set as incomplete for a fit decision.

The exception worth naming is knitwear with a pattern or a print. A print can look misaligned in a photograph because the fabric was not squared to the frame, so for printed items you want a fifth angle: the print laid flat and squared, with an edge of the garment visible in frame so the alignment can be judged against a straight line rather than against the image border.