Why there is four per cent elastane in a cotton tee
Two of our tees are ninety-six per cent cotton and four per cent elastane. Elastane is a synthetic polymer. If you have come to this brand because it says no polyester, that number deserves an explanation rather than a footnote.
What the four per cent is doing
Cotton has almost no elastic recovery. Pull it and it stays pulled. In a loose garment that does not matter much, and in a fitted one it matters enormously: a close-cut cotton tee with no recovery bags at the elbows within a day and never comes back, and the seat and knees of cotton trousers do the same. The garment does not wear out, it just stops holding the shape you bought it for.
Four per cent elastane fixes that. It is enough to pull the knit back after it has been stretched and not enough to change what the cloth feels like against skin. You are still wearing cotton. It simply returns to its shape.
Why not leave it out
We could, and the honest answer is that the garment would be worse. A hundred per cent cotton version of the same fitted tee would look identical on the hanger and be visibly out of shape after a season. That is not a purity win, it is a garment with a shorter life, and longevity is the part of this that actually counts. A piece kept for five years beats a slightly purer one replaced twice.
So the trade is stated instead of avoided. Our bodycon tee lists 96% cotton / 4% elastane on the product page, before you buy, next to the care instructions.
The standard is no polyester in any main material. It is not, and has never been, that nothing synthetic exists anywhere in the garment.
Where the standard actually stops
This is worth being precise about, because a vague claim is worse than a narrow one.
What we hold to is that the main material contains no polyester. Polyester is what a fast tee is made of when the cloth itself is plastic, it is what sheds microplastic by the hundred thousand in a wash, and it is what makes a cheap shirt feel like a cheap shirt. Excluding it from the cloth is a meaningful line.
Four per cent elastane in a knit is a different thing at a different scale, and it is there for function rather than to make the cotton go further. The winged tee is 95% modal and 5% elastane on the same reasoning.
If your standard is stricter than ours, that is a completely reasonable place to be, and the tunics are the ones to look at: the dark tunic and its siblings are one hundred per cent cotton with no elastane at all. They are cut loose, which is exactly why they do not need it.
Care matters more here than usual. Elastane is the part that heat damages: wash at 30°C, tumble dry low or not at all, and the recovery lasts. A hot dryer is what kills stretch, in any garment, from any brand.
Sources
Everything above that is a claim about the world rather than about us is checkable here. If we have got something wrong, we would like to know.
- FTC, Threading Your Way Through the Labeling Requirements Under the Textile and Wool Acts
- 16 CFR Part 303 fibres under five per cent may be shown as "other fiber" unless functionally significant, which is why elastane is named rather than hidden.