Hey what happend to my t-shirt?

Ever wonder why your favorite t-shirt of 8 months is starting to look faded, worn, and barely wearable? Well, it’s the cotton. There are varying degrees of quality and construction that you might not be aware of.

Our company’s “rhetoric” has always been to build premium garments and match them with clever and innovative prints. In the literary practice of “show, don’t tell” we went looking for a way to prove the superiority of our shirts. We decided to document our shirts over the course of 25 washes.

• What were the conditions?
  The two shirts (pictured new on the left) were washed 25 times in a conventional washing machine over the course of one month. The top shirt is a brand new shirt from Rhetoric and the bottom is a brand new shirt from American Apparel. American Apparel makes excellent industry standard blanks from 30/1 ring spun cotton, while the Rhetoric shirt is 40/1 (slightly thinner) ring spun cotton. Both shirts were washed together in cold water with detergent, tumbled dry and lightly ironed as needed. The t-shirts were washed and never worn. No photographs were doctored beyond slight color matching.

• Why 25 washes?
  We estimate 25 to be the maximum amount of washes possible in one year. However, this number is more likely to be representative of 18 months to 2 years.

• What is the conclusion?
  When we started this experiment we were confident that our shirts would at least stand up. Never did we anticipate the results and we would like to reinforce that these findings were done without favor or special treatment to our garment. We will leave the final judgment to you.