Fabrics are usually measured in ounces per square yard. The heavier the fabric, the thicker or denser it is. A standard similarly priced T-shirt’s fabric usually teeters at just over 4 ounces. The Comfort Colors 1717 tee clocks in at a beefy 6.1 ounces. The fabric has an impressive density and weight, which helps the shirt keep its shape throughout the day.
And yet, while thickness can sometimes mean a stiffer fabric (think back to all those heavy, rigid gym T-shirts from high school), I’ve found the opposite is true in this case. What made me fall in love with this shirt is its almost paradoxical softness. It is heavy and delicate at the same time.
Comfort Colors uses ring-spun cotton, which produces longer and smoother yarns. The fabric has a plush, almost lofty texture, and the shirt itself ripples in gentle waves rather than in hard creases like so many cheap shirts. During my week of wearing only that original red shirt, I found myself repeatedly running my fingertips across the fabric.
I particularly love that these shirts are garment-dyed, which imparts a prewashed, almost aged softness that makes them feel like well-worn vintage items rather than brand-new shirts. It also gives the color a pleasantly sun-faded appearance. My favorite color is pepper, which is a blend of charcoal beneath a beautifully ebbing black with hints of pale blue-green.
But the shirt’s greatest achievement lies in its fit. As a man who stands at 5-foot-6, T-shirts have always been a point of difficulty for me. Comfort Colors shirts have a relaxed cut without being overly boxy or baggy.
The dropped shoulder seams let the garment sit square on my body, and the weight of the fabric gives it a drape that thinner T-shirts are gravitationally incapable of pulling off. It’s a drape that makes you look—and feel—at ease. It also doesn’t have any side seams, which makes them wear more comfortably. These are the shirts I want to wear on my longest days.
A $10 T-shirt is not without its issues, however. I’ve experienced some variations across batches and received shirts an inch or so longer than the previous one, or wider, or narrower. The collar band has also changed from year to year, with some being wider or skinnier, or sitting higher on the neck than others.
But, for me, these fluctuations are forgivable at the price, and are the type of sins easily washed out by a trip through a washing machine.
I’ve also experienced stock issues and have noticed that some colors disappear for months at a time—sometimes they never return at all. With Comfort Colors, it is best to never get too attached to a single color, or, alternatively, to stockpile it.
I am not really someone who wears red, or much of any color, for that matter. Nor am I someone who has a collection of different T-shirts from every city I visit.
If anything, my wardrobe is more akin to the uniform of a cartoon character. New things are rarely introduced, and when I find something I like, it gets incorporated into the uniform, canonized like an amendment in the Bill of Rights.
It is not often that a single garment can change the way you think of dressing yourself, but of all the shirts I’d found and fallen in love with over the years, the red custard-shop T-shirt quickly became my favorite—a lone and bizarre outlier in a wardrobe of grays and navys and blacks, until I lost it on another vacation years later.
Out of curiosity, I went back to the same shop recently and found that it no longer used Comfort Colors for its shirts. Of course, you can never have another first frozen-custard emergency T-shirt, but luckily, in this case, I was able to go online and buy several more just like it.
This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Catherine Kast.
