Why Is Cotton So Comfortable?

The answer lies in nature.

Cotton is designed by nature for comfort: the seeds of the cotton plant develop snugly inside this fluffy material until they’re ready to make their journey to soil. Repurposing cotton for fabric has been a practice around the world for thousands of years , and while there are many alternative fabrics today, cotton remains one of the most comfortable fabrics used to make high quality T-shirts.

Why? Simply put: because it’s natural.

Unlike synthetic fabrics, cotton is a living organism, which means you can get out of the fabric what you put into the plant. But working with organic fabric is only a starting point–how the crops are grown and how the fabric is processed also affects how comfortable and high quality your T-shirt will be.

The more care that goes into growing and harvesting cotton organically, the more comfortable and high quality the T-shirt will be. Fundamentally cotton is comfortable for several reasons.

COTTON IS NATURALLY SOFT

Technology and special processes can make cotton softer, but nature itself is what makes cotton so fluffy and soft in the first place. While most regular cotton production involves cutting costs to grow genetically modified organisms, organic cotton production aims to grow a healthier crop without chemicals. This does require more effort and cost, but results in softer and more durable fabric that makes higher quality cotton T-shirts.

In other words, organic cotton production works with nature instead of against it, and the result is a softer, more comfortable cotton.

The material used to make cotton T-shirts comes from the boll of cotton plants. A boll is a fluffy seed capsule that protects the seeds and helps them disperse. When harvested, the boll is mechanically separated from the seeds and spun into yarn.

Many regular cotton manufacturers use chemicals to soften their yarns, but higher-quality cotton gets a special treatment called combing, which mechanically filters out shorter fibers and makes the product even softer and more durable for when it’s woven into fabric.
Manufacturers also tend to use vegetable fibers to make cheaper yarns, but that diminishes the quality and durability of the material. Alternatively, ring spun cotton is made by twisting cotton strands together to create a yarn that is made of 100% organic cotton.

The finer yarn enables a higher thread count, or number of threads woven together per square inch. Generally speaking finer textiles have a higher thread count–our classic T-shirts are made with 40 single, 137 GSM 100% organic cotton.

Using high-quality organic cotton takes softness to the next level–it makes the T-shirts feel weightless . But that also has to do with how well cotton T-shirts can “breathe.”

COTTON IS SO COMFORTABLE BECAUSE IT BREATHES WELL

Cotton is a natural hollow fiber , which means air can pass through it with ease. That’s why when you wear classic cotton T-shirts, you can still feel fresh air on your skin.

Synthetic T-shirts, made with materials like nylon or polyester, are the opposite of breathable. Nylon is a type of plastic, which traps heat and moisture against your skin. This can get very uncomfortable (and gross) in hot weather!

The breathability of cotton T-shirts is what makes them so comfortable to wear in hot and humid climates. This is why you might see so many landscapers, construction workers, and athletes so comfortable wearing long sleeve cotton T-shirts on hot summer days.

Anyone wearing a long sleeve T-shirt in summer isn’t sacrificing comfort for style–in fact, they’re probably cooler and so much more comfortable in a long sleeve cotton T-shirt which helps keep the sun and moisture off their skin.

Cotton absorbs moisture quickly, and it also dries quickly, which can keep you dry while working outdoors, and protect outer garments worn over your cotton T-shirt.

ORGANIC COTTON DOESN’T HARM YOUR SKIN

If you’ve ever worn cotton clothing that irritates your skin, it’s probably not the cotton that’s irritating you, but the chemicals that can be found in inorganic clothing.

Regular cotton production involves pesticides and chemicals that can get into the textile and harm your skin. Even if those pesticides get washed out during production, the chemicals and dyes used to treat the regular cotton stay on the shirt and come in contact with your body.

To avoid these chemicals, make sure your T-shirt is GOTS (Global Organic Textiles Standard) certified .

WHY IS COTTON THE BEST FABRIC?

Cotton is known to be “the best fabric” because of its potential to be versatile, comfortable and sustainable, both for consumers and the planet. Nylon and polyester products are constantly shedding plastic microfibers that diminish the quality of the product after every wash, and low-quality cotton clothing is prone to shrinking and wrinkling because their threads are not closely woven together as high quality t shirts. Classic high quality cotton T-shirts are also preshrunk so that they can be washed as needed and again and again.