Interesting questions to think about. Seeing if everyone independently describes the clothes the same way (as suggested by others) might work, unless the information is leaked. Personally, my mind went straight to the physics of the thing, ‘going all science on it’ as you say—as emperor, I’d claim that the clothes should have some minimum strength, lest I rip them the moment I put them on. If a piece of the fabric, stretched by the two tailors, can at least support the weight of my hand (or some other light object if you’re not too paranoid about the tailor’s abilities as illusionists), then it should be suitable.
Then, when your hand (or whatever) goes straight through, either they’ll admit that the clothes aren’t real, or they’ll come up with some excuse about the cloth being so fine that it ripped or things go straight through, at which point you can say that these clothes are useless to you if they’ll rip at the slightest movement or somehow phase through flesh, etc.
Incidentally, that’s one of my approaches to other things invisible to me that others believe in. Does it have practical uses or create a physical effect in the world? If not, then even if it’s really there, there’s not much point in acknowledging it...
Interesting questions to think about. Seeing if everyone independently describes the clothes the same way (as suggested by others) might work, unless the information is leaked. Personally, my mind went straight to the physics of the thing, ‘going all science on it’ as you say—as emperor, I’d claim that the clothes should have some minimum strength, lest I rip them the moment I put them on. If a piece of the fabric, stretched by the two tailors, can at least support the weight of my hand (or some other light object if you’re not too paranoid about the tailor’s abilities as illusionists), then it should be suitable.
Then, when your hand (or whatever) goes straight through, either they’ll admit that the clothes aren’t real, or they’ll come up with some excuse about the cloth being so fine that it ripped or things go straight through, at which point you can say that these clothes are useless to you if they’ll rip at the slightest movement or somehow phase through flesh, etc.
Incidentally, that’s one of my approaches to other things invisible to me that others believe in. Does it have practical uses or create a physical effect in the world? If not, then even if it’s really there, there’s not much point in acknowledging it...