Two Shirts, Same Size, Different Shirt: A Guide to Blanks, Sizing, and the Dryer

You order two shirts in the same size, from the same shop, on the same afternoon. They arrive and they are not the same shirt. One is soft and slightly boxy and looks like it has already lived a full life. The other is lighter, straighter, and fits the way a t-shirt fits in your head. Nothing went wrong. There is more than one blank garment under our designs, they behave differently, and nobody ever explains this to anybody. So here is the field guide, mostly so you can stop blaming yourself.

The blank is the actual product

The design is why you clicked. The blank decides whether the shirt lives in your rotation or in the back of a drawer with the free 5k shirts. Most of what we print sits on a standard mid-weight cotton tee with a regular fit, which is straight through the body, true to size, and reliably normal. A smaller run, almost all of it seasonal, sits on a heavyweight garment-dyed tee, and that one is a genuinely different animal.

The new Halloween school supplies parade tee is one of the heavyweight ones, which is why it looks broken in already.

Garment-dyed means the color went on last

A normal tee is cut and sewn from fabric that was already dyed. A garment-dyed tee is sewn first and dyed afterward as a finished shirt, so the color settles into the seams and hems unevenly and every single one comes out a little different from the next. The pigment also sits closer to the surface and starts softening immediately, which is why these arrive looking like a shirt you have owned since college. You get the vintage wash on day one instead of in year three. The trade is that they run heavier, cut roomier through the body, and take a bit more shrink on the first wash.

Getting the size right the first time

• Measure a shirt you already love. Lay it flat, measure armpit to armpit, and match that number. It beats every adjective on every size chart ever written.
• Chest width is the number that matters. Length is almost never the complaint. Width always is.
• Regular fit means straight, not slim. Want it fitted, size down. Want it oversized, size up exactly one. Two sizes up is not oversized, it is a nightgown.
• Garment-dyed runs boxier. If you are between sizes on one of those, go up rather than down.
• Unisex sizing is drafted for a straight torso. If yours is shorter, expect length, and consider that a feature.

Something like the raccoon at the skatepark is the other kind, the standard regular-fit blank, which is the one to order in your usual size without thinking about it.

That is most of the catalog, and it is the safer default if you are buying for somebody else and cannot measure their favorite shirt without being extremely obvious about it. It is also the better pick for anyone who runs warm, since the heavyweight version is a joy in October and an opinion in July.

The dryer is where t-shirts go to die

Everything that ruins a printed shirt is heat, and the dryer is where you keep your heat. Wash cold, turn it inside out first so the print rubs against itself instead of your zipper, and either tumble on low or skip the dryer entirely. Skip fabric softener, which coats a print and dulls it, and never put an iron directly on the design unless you want to find out what melted ink smells like. Hang it by the hem or fold it, because hanging a wet shirt by the shoulders is how you get those two small pointed shoulder ghosts that never come out.

The one nobody warns you about

Wash a garment-dyed shirt by itself the first time, or at least with things you already know are on its side. Surface pigment means a little color comes off in that first wash, which is completely normal, mildly alarming, and very bad news for a white sock that happened to be in the wrong load.

Buy the joke, keep the shirt

A funny shirt only works if it stays in the rotation long enough to keep being funny, and that comes down to the size being right and the dryer being avoided. Have a look at what is in the shop, check which blank you are getting on the way through, and buy the one you will still be wearing in three years.