The material of a t-shirt will affect the fit, style and durability. With premium tee shirts now selling at retail prices of $50.00 and up, it’s important to understand how the quality will affect the look, feel and style. The tips in this article will help you get the most shopping bang for your buck!
First and foremost, make sure that you understand the quality of the material. Many manufacturers of licensed band merchandise offer shirts that vary in quality from basic to premium. For example, an industry standard heavyweight cotton tee is generally composed of an 18/1 thread count. This means that it takes 18 threads to make up every inch of fabric. The higher number of threads per inch typically increases the price.
In addition to standard tees, most larger manufacturers Veganism of officially licensed tour merchandise offer premium band t-shirts that are printed on higher quality cotton tees. Typically, the thread counts in these band t-shirts are 30/1, 40/1 or higher! This means that these concert tees have 30 or 40 threads per inch of t-shirt. The threads that make up these shirts is much thinner than the threads that compose 18/1 t-shirts so the overall feel of your 30/1 or 40/1 band shirt is going to be much softer and will have a lighter, silk-like feel to the fabric. These tee shirts will also appear to be thinner than a regular 18/1 shirt. Due to the thinner threads in the premium 30/1 and 40/1, these shirts will hang on your body differently. They will be just slightly more fitted because they will slightly contour around the body. In addition, most manufacturers of officially licensed band t-shirts offer these premium t-shirts in fitted cuts to give them a much more stylish look than the typical “boxy” standard t-shirts. For women, these cuts are more pronounced, but for men’s band t-shirts, the tapering on the sides is usually less than an inch smaller (from armpit to armpit) than the standard fit shirt. This is just enough to make the tee shirts look less boxy and slightly fitted without being constricting.
Although we used the example of licensed band t shirts here, these t-shirt quality standards apply to almost every industry of printed t-shirts. Understanding the differences in quality will help you make sure you get the perfect t-shirt.
Joshua Lundorff is the owner of Band-Shirt.com in Minneapolis, MN. Band-Shirt.com features officially licensed concert tees with free shipping on every order. It is a division of Rockline Enterprises LLC, a retail and wholesale distribution company specializing in the sale of licensed band merchandise. Other websites include their band merchandise retail site at Rock-n-Roll-Action-Figures.com.