Why are plus size organic cotton t-shirts still not a thing?
I’ve been doing t-shirt-printing-related things for around eighteen years now, on and off. (These photos are from 2004.)
To begin with it was impossible to get plus size t-shirts at all (note to manufacturers: size UK16 is not a plus size!), and now you can, from a few brands, but apparently not from any of the organic ones. And they’re still not easily available from print-on-demand companies, who tend to offer a smaller selection of brands and styles, now that we no longer own the heat press and vinyl cutter ourselves.
(Also, while I’m having a rant, making things in a “loose fit” doesn’t mean that you can offer fewer sizes just because the actual width of the garment is the same as a larger size in another style!)
I really want to design some more t-shirts, but organic cotton is apparently only for people who have a narrower than 43″ chest. Oh, except for men. Who can have organic t-shirts up to a 62″ chest. Why can’t women have that?
Well, apparently they can, because most of those t-shirts are labelled “unisex”… but because the sizes get longer as they go up in width, well, heaven forbid that a shorter person might want a XXXL t-shirt that doesn’t come down to their knees. Or with flapping great sleeves down to their elbows.
I really want everything I design to be available to as many people as possible (which is why I made my dresses up to a size 30+), and it’s making me very cross that, eighteen years since I started printing t-shirts, this apparently still can’t happen.