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I'm going to wear my red tee tonight.
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If you’ve ever looked at a $5 H&M white T-shirt, you’ll notice it doesn’t look all that different from a plain white designer tee that sells for upwards of $300. What’s the deal with the price difference? Is the designer tee just ridiculously marked up, or is there more to it than that?
There are plenty of factors involved in determining the retail price of a T-shirt.
fabric.
- “Fabric is the largest cost component of most wearing apparel,” Margaret Bishop, a professor at Parsons School of Design at The New School and at The Fashion Institute of Technology, told HuffPost, adding that fiber “is the largest cost component of most fabric.”
- let’s look at cotton, one of the most common fabrics used for basic white T-shirts. Preeti Gopinath, associate professor of textiles and director of the MFA textile program at Parsons School of Design at The New School, explained that higher grades of cotton will cost more than lower grades Then there’s the variety and quality of cotton ― is it Sea Island cotton? Egyptian cotton? Pima cotton? That choice further affects the cost, and if elastane is added to the cotton for stretch and better recovery ability, that adds to the cost as well.
- There are also branded fibers, which, you guessed it, cost more than unbranded ones (similar to generic versus brand-name pharmaceuticals). For instance, the brand name for pima cotton is Supima, and that name has a marketing cost associated with it, Bishop explained.
- On top of all that, Bishop and Gopinath noted, if cotton is 100 percent organic, it will come with a higher price tag. Something that is made of a blend of cotton and a synthetic fabric, like polyester, on the other hand, will likely be cheaper; polyester and other synthetic fabrics are cheaper fibers, Gopinath said.
It’s not necessarily true that a designer T-shirt will be made with the most expensive cotton available, but, as Bishop explained, “it’s more likely that if it’s a very low price, the quality is not going to be as good as it will be for many of the more expensive brands.”
Manufacturing
- Both the labor involved in making a T-shirt and the country in which it’s manufactured play a role in determining the cost of a product.
- If a brand is made overseas, the labor may add practically nothing to the final price of a T-shirt. “It’s negligible,” she said, noting that it may add “a few cents ... if it’s a mass-produced T-shirt made in Bangladesh.”
- Again, not every single cheap T-shirt is made in India or Bangladesh, where the minimum wage is significantly lower than in the U.S., but it’s extremely common. Just take a look at any of your H&M and Forever 21 tees, and you’ll notice many of them say “Made in Bangladesh.”
- The economy of scale also plays a role in figuring out the overall cost. That means if a company produces 10,000 shirts, it would be cheaper than producing only 10 shirts.
- There’s an ethical component involved, too. As we’ve learned over the years, the garment industry, especially in places like Bangladesh, doesn’t have a great track record for providing safe work environments or fair wages for employees. Yet, many of us still bring those $5 T-shirts up to the cash register and revel in our thriftiness.
- When it comes to the country of manufacture, it affects the overall cost largely because of import duties and shipping cost.
Is it worth it?
- In some cases, sure, a $100 or $200 T-shirt may warrant such a price tag. For instance, Gopinath said, if a company is using eco-friendly and sustainable processes to make T-shirts in small batches in the U.S. with a small ecological footprint, those products would definitely cost more. But at the same time, “you can get what looks like the same thing made in Bangladesh or India for $5.”
- As Bishop noted, “You could have a very expensive brand that actually makes and sells low-quality product, and you could have a more affordable brand that sells very high-quality product.”
- There are some brands out there, like Everlane and Kotn, trying to bridge the gap between quality and affordability, without allowing unfair and unethical treatment in the manufacturing process.
- According to Bishop, there are some things to look for when you want to make sure you’re getting a quality tee.
For instance, if you hold the fabric up to the light, the yarn is generally much more uniform and smooth in a high-quality fabric. You can also train your fingertips to feel the fabric. A nice quality T-shirt should feel smoother, she said.
Now that you’re armed with knowledge to assess the value of your next white T-shirt, the choices are up to you.
Responce:
the veil of humanity may face ethical issues, however, Gildan make their tees in Central America.
using cheap tees are in someways just as good a quality, however in comparison to brands such as Gucci, the irony comes in of my brand making you pay the same price for an inferior garment.
Sources:
27/08/2018 10:46am BST | Updated August 29, 2018
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