Band tees get ordered in the wrong size more often than anything else we sell. Somebody who has been a medium in every shirt they own for fifteen years buys a medium Jam tee and finds it cut for a lorry driver, or the other way about, and the letter on the label turns out to mean almost nothing.
Licensed shirts do not follow high street sizing because they are not made by high street brands. They are printed onto blank bodies bought in from a small number of manufacturers, and those blanks carry their own history and their own idea of what a medium is. Band t shirts reward anybody willing to get a tape measure out.
Why Licensed Tees Sit Outside High Street Sizing
A licensed shirt starts with a rights holder. The estate that controls The Who, Trojan Records, whoever currently looks after The Clash catalogue. They approve the artwork and they approve the manufacturer, and that manufacturer then prints onto a blank body bought in bulk. The blank gets chosen for print surface, colour range and cost, and nobody in that chain is thinking about how a British medium is supposed to sit on a British chest.
High street sizing is worked backwards from a fit model and adjusted every season to suit whatever the brand thinks its customer looks like this year. Blank tees change far more slowly than that, and plenty of them still run to American sizing, where a medium is a good inch or two wider across the chest than the equivalent here. There is no conspiracy in it, just two industries starting from different places. Our t shirts carry actual measurements for exactly this reason.
From Boxy Nineties Cuts to Modern Retail Fit
A tee printed in 1993 was a different shape of garment. Chest half measure on a medium sat around twenty one to twenty two inches, the body was short relative to that width, the sleeves were wide and cut straight, and the shoulder seam dropped well past the bone. Those shirts looked square because they were square, and they were built on tubular bodies with no side seams at all.
From the early 2000s the blanks moved to what the trade calls retail fit. Narrower through the chest, longer in the body, a set in sleeve that follows the shoulder line, side seams sewn in so the shirt follows the torso. Same letter on the label, and one to three inches less room round the chest once you double the flat figures. If you remember what your old tour shirt felt like and the new reissue feels tight, that gap is the reason. Most of our printed tees use the modern cut.
Measure the Chest, Ignore the Letter
The only number that matters is pit to pit, measured flat. Lay the shirt on a table, smooth it out without pulling on it, and run a tape from one underarm seam straight across to the other. Double that figure and you have the chest circumference of the garment.
For a regular fit you want the shirt measuring four to six inches more than your own chest. Two to four inches gives you a close fit that shows the shoulder. Eight inches or more puts you back in nineties territory, which is a perfectly good place to be if that is what you are after, so long as you chose it deliberately. The mens size guide has our own measurements set out in full.
Typical Chest Measurements by Size
These are working figures for a modern retail fit blank, taken flat and doubled. Treat them as a starting point and not as gospel, because a heavyweight tee will usually run a shade wider than a lightweight one in the same nominal size.
| Size | Pit to pit flat | Garment chest | Body chest for regular fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 19 in | 38 in | 33 to 34 in |
| Medium | 20.5 in | 41 in | 36 to 37 in |
| Large | 22 in | 44 in | 39 to 40 in |
| XL | 24 in | 48 in | 43 to 44 in |
| XXL | 26 in | 52 in | 47 to 48 in |
Length moves too, and it moves less predictably. A medium retail body usually runs about twenty eight inches from the high shoulder point down to the hem. Anything under twenty seven will ride up the moment you lift your arms.
Single Stitch, Double Stitch and What They Tell You
Turn a tee inside out and look at the sleeve openings and the bottom hem. A single row of stitching means it was sewn on a single needle machine, which was standard across the American blank industry until roughly 1994. After that the trade moved to twin needle machines, which lay down two parallel rows and give a stronger hem in less time.
Collectors use single stitch as a dating shortcut and it is a fair one for American made shirts. It also tells you something useful about fit, because a single stitch body is almost certainly one of those old square blanks with a dropped shoulder. Everything we sell is double stitched and cut to be worn rather than kept in a drawer under acid free tissue.
Shrinkage, Washing and Keeping the Print Alive
Cotton shrinks. Ring spun cotton loses somewhere between three and five percent on a first hot wash and most of that goes into the length instead of the width, so on a large you can lose the best part of an inch off the body. Pre shrunk or compacted cotton moves less, perhaps two percent, but nothing labelled 100 percent cotton is truly stable at 60 degrees, whatever the tag claims.
- Wash at 30 degrees, inside out, on a normal cycle. Cold water and turning it inside out does more for a print than any detergent on the shelf.
- Skip the tumble dryer entirely. Heat is what cracks plastisol ink and what pulls the body length in. Hang it on a line instead.
- Iron on the reverse only. A hot plate straight onto a print will glaze it, and on a discharge print it can lift it off altogether.
- Leave the fabric conditioner out. It builds up around the ink and dulls the colour over a few dozen washes.
Reggae and reissue designs matter more here because they lean on big blocks of solid colour, where any fading shows up straight away. A Trojan Records tee will hold its colour for years on a cold wash and go grey inside six months on a hot one, and the same is true across the rest of our ska clothing.
How to Measure A Shirt You Already Own
The most reliable size reference in the world is the tee already hanging in your wardrobe, the one you would wear every day if it were socially acceptable. Five minutes with a tape and you never have to guess again.
- Lay it flat on a table, front up, and smooth the creases out without stretching the fabric.
- Measure pit to pit, seam to seam, in a straight line across the chest. Write the number down.
- Measure from the highest point of the shoulder next to the collar straight down to the bottom hem. That is your body length.
- Measure across the back from one shoulder seam to the other for shoulder width.
- Compare all three against the product measurements before you order. If chest and length disagree with each other, follow the chest.
Those three numbers will serve you across everything, not only band tees. Jackets, knitwear and shirts all come back to the same chest figure, so once you have it written down somewhere sensible, ordering anything from the full range stops being a gamble.
Band Tee Sizing FAQ
Five sizing questions we answer most weeks.
- Do band t shirts run small? Modern licensed tees printed on retail fit blanks generally run about a size smaller than the same letter on the high street. Older or reissue style blanks run larger and squarer. Always check the pit to pit measurement instead of trusting the label.
- What does pit to pit mean? It is the distance across a shirt laid flat, from one underarm seam to the other. Double it and you get the full chest measurement of the garment.
- How much will a 100 percent cotton tee shrink? Around three to five percent on a hot wash, mostly in the body length. Washing at 30 degrees and hanging it to dry keeps nearly all of it.
- What is single stitch and does it matter? Single stitch is one row of stitching on the hems, standard on American blanks until about 1994. It is a rough dating clue for vintage shirts and it usually signals a boxy old cut. Modern shirts use twin needle stitching.
- Should I size up on a band t shirt? Only if you want the older loose cut. Take your chest measurement, add four to six inches, and buy the size closest to that figure.