Tricks to tell a good t-shirt from a bad one

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The way big retailers keep prices down is by cutting corners. May it be by using cheap materials, paying low wages or skipping steps of the process. Sometimes brands use one, two or all three of these tactics. This results in garments that, while affordable, end up looking like they’ve been to hell and back after just one wash.

For a good quality T-shirt, we need good textiles but how it is made is equally important. After all, it doesn’t matter how good the materials are, if a building is poorly constructed it will still fall. There are many different types of knits and stitches that will give a T-shirt its sturdiness and durability.

There are a couple of tests you can run to make sure you’re making a good investment:

Touch

The easiest test is to simply touch. A good quality T-shirt will never feel like plastic or boxy. If the fabric feels soft but firm at the same time, then chances are that it is good quality material. We already mentioned that ‘softness’ can be cheated which is why you must keep an eye on other details.

Check the label

Most T-shirts don’t have a thread count on their labels, but they do indicate the material it is made of and if it has been mixed with something else.

Run the wrinkling test

Crumple a part of the garment in your hand and then release. If it maintains a lot of wrinkles then it is probably bad quality, if it doesn’t maintain any wrinkles at all then it is probably a synthetic material. Ideally, you’d be looking for something between the two.

Also, check out how many stitches it has. The higher the count then the better because it means that more time was spent putting the garment together.

Inspect the hems

Like stitches, hems are indicative of how much care was put when making the garment. When it comes to T-shirts, you should be paying particular attention to the collar, the sleeves and the lower hem.

Double-check the patterns

If you’re buying a T-shirt with a pattern that is. A well-made garment will have the pattern matching at the seams.

If you’ve never paid attention to this kind of things, then a good place to start would be your wardrobe. Compare different garments you have and try to relate to the brands.

Check the transparency

Hold the garment against a light source and see how transparent it becomes. The more transparency, then the less density.

Count the stiches

Stitches are the muscles of a garment; they’re what keeps everything together. Because manufacturers will always pay more attention to the outside of a T-shirt, the easiest way to tell if a stitch is done well or not is by turning it around. Is it even? Does it lie flat? Are there any loose threads? These are all signs of poor manufacturing.

However, one place you won’t have to check much for quality is PriyoShop.com. We promise the best quality when it comes to t-shirts amongst other things. Oh, and did we mention there is a T-Shirt Fest going on right now? What better time to shop for t-shirts? Check out our T-Shirt Fest here.

Source: PriyoShop

Source: Dhaka Tribune