The single question I get asked most is whether it will shrink.
The short answer is no, as long as you follow the instructions. The longer answer is worth reading once, because knitwear behaves differently to a printed shirt and most people have only ever owned the printed kind.
Here is everything, and then the reasoning underneath it.
The instructions
- Hand wash in cold water, on its own.
- Do not bleach and do not soak.
- Lay flat to dry.
- Do not tumble dry.
- Steam iron only if needed, and never directly on the embroidery.
- Do not dry clean.
That is genuinely it. Treated this way, it will outlast anything printed.
Why cold water, and why by hand
Heat is the thing that shrinks knitwear, not water.
Knitted fabric is made of interlocking loops rather than threads woven flat. Those loops have a natural amount of tension in them, and heat plus agitation makes the fibres relax and pull tighter together. That is shrinking. It is not the garment getting smaller in some abstract sense, it is thousands of loops closing up.
Cold water does not trigger it. A washing machine, even on a cold cycle, still adds the agitation part, which is why hand washing is the safer instruction rather than just a fussier one.
Washing it on its own matters for a different reason. Knit has texture, and texture catches. Zips, buttons and hooks on other garments are what cause pulls, and a pull in a knit does not sit flat again the way a snag in a woven shirt might.
Why laying flat matters more than people think
This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that actually decides whether the shirt keeps its shape.
A wet knitted garment is heavy. If you hang it on a hanger or a line, gravity pulls that weight downward through the fabric while it dries, and the loops set in that stretched position. You end up with a longer body, wider shoulders and a collar that has opened up. It is permanent, because the fibres dried in that shape.
Lay it flat on a towel, gently push it back into its proper shape with your hands, and let it dry there. It takes longer. It is the difference between a shirt that fits the same in two years and one that does not.
The embroidery and the numbering
The crest is embroidered and the numbers are appliqué, stitched rather than heat pressed. That is the reason they will not crack or peel, and it is also why the ironing rule exists.
Embroidery thread sits above the surface of the fabric. Putting a hot iron directly onto it flattens the stitching and can leave a shine on the thread that does not come back. If the shirt needs a press, steam it from the reverse side, or steam it hanging without letting the plate touch the front.
Honestly, most of the time it does not need ironing at all. Knit falls out of its creases on its own far better than polyester does.
Storage
Fold it. Do not hang it.
Same reason as drying. A knitted garment on a hanger is slowly being pulled downward by its own weight, and over months that shows up in the shoulders. Folded in a drawer, nothing is pulling on it.
What about the material
Our knit is a viscose and nylon blend with a small amount of polyester in it, and that choice was deliberate.
We tested a version in straight cotton first. On paper it sounds like the better answer, because cotton is what everyone wants to hear. In practice it was heavy, it was stiff, it sat like a box rather than falling properly, and it trapped heat badly enough that I was uncomfortable just trying it on indoors.
The blend solved all of it. It drapes instead of hanging, it breathes, it is light enough to wear through summer, and it holds the jacquard pattern and the embroidery without the fabric going rigid around the stitching.
So it is not a blend because it is cheaper. It is a blend because for this specific garment it is better, and we picked it after seeing both side by side.
Practically, it also means it dries faster than cotton would and it resists creasing better. It just needs the cold water and the flat dry.
If something goes wrong
If you get a pull, do not cut it. Use a needle to draw the loop back through to the inside of the garment where it will sit unseen. Cutting it creates a hole that will grow.
If something more serious happens, email us at s90collectives@gmail.com. We would rather help you fix it than have you give up on the shirt.
Full details on construction and fit are on the Portugal No. 17 and Argentina No. 10 product pages.