Why a Heavy Sweatshirt Is Hard to Get Right
Why a Heavy Sweatshirt Is Hard to Get Right
The sweatshirt began as a fix for an itchy football jersey. Then it got complicated.
A sweatshirt looks like the simplest thing in a wardrobe. It is one of the harder pieces to get right, and the reasons go back a hundred years.
1926
A quarterback at the University of Alabama named Benjamin Russell Jr. went to his father with a complaint. The wool practice jerseys itched, held sweat, and shrank in the wash.
His father ran a knitting mill in Alexander City that made cotton undergarments. He made a cotton pullover instead. The crew neck went into production in 1930 and the shape has barely moved since.
The name came from the job. It was a shirt for sweat.
That Little V
The V stitched below the collar on a good sweatshirt is not decoration. It was a heavier piece of cotton set into the neck to take sweat, and the reinforced stitching held the collar's shape when the shirt was pulled on and off wet.
It survived a century because it works. Most sweatshirts fail at the collar first.
Terry Is Not Fleece
French terry leaves the loops closed on the inside of the cloth. Fleece takes those same loops and brushes them open into a nap.
Fleece is warmer at first and loses its face faster. Terry is denser, cooler across a wider range of weather, and holds its shape for years. If you want a sweatshirt you can wear in September and again in February, terry is the answer.
Weight Changes Everything
Heavy terry does not behave like light terry. It shrinks more, it settles more, and it takes a season to stop being a garment and start being yours.
That has to be handled at the pattern stage. Cut a heavy sweat to the same measurements as a light one and it will not fit anybody after the first wash. Ours are cut generously on purpose.
Ours
The 30oz terry is made entirely in the United States. The terry is produced here. It is cut and sewn in Seattle. It is garment dyed here in our own colors, Charcoal Grey and Old Money Green, which means the finished piece goes into the dye whole and comes out with the depth and the slight variation that only garment dyeing gives you.
Vintage stitch throughout.
The vintage washed crew terry sweatshirts are made in Japan. Different piece, different room, same standard.
A Way Of Life.
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Made in Seattle, Made in Japan