What Is the Best T-Shirt Brand for Men?

Quick Answer

At the factory in Long Eaton, England, every Sunspel Classic T-Shirt gets a sticker with the name of the person who last inspected it. Whether that makes it the best T-shirt brand for men depends on what you need it for. For the quiet basic with no logo: yes. For Made in Germany, it's Merz b. Schwanen. For oversized shirts with a screenprint, Represent or (we're biased) HUSTLE&PAIN. For little money, Los Angeles Apparel or Uniqlo U.

Twelve Brands at a Glance

• Basic with no logo: Sunspel (€110), Asket (€50), Colorful Standard (€35)
• Oversized with screenprint: Represent Owners Club (220 g/m², €110), HUSTLE&PAIN Oversized T-Shirts (mostly 300 GSM)
• Logo, but quiet: Fear of God Essentials Classic Tee (220 g/m², €96)
• For under any jacket: Carhartt WIP Chase (€39)
• Made in Germany: Merz b. Schwanen 215 (245 g/m², €105), Trigema
• First boxy fit for little money: Uniqlo U
• Heavy and cheap: Los Angeles Apparel 1801 (220 g/m²), Colorful Standard Heavy Organic Boxy Tee (240 g/m², €50)
• Very heavy: Camber Max-Weight (8 oz, a good 270 g/m², only through retailers)
• The first test: A good brand states fibre, weight and origin

Quick Questions

What is the best T-shirt brand for men?

That depends on what you need it for. For a basic with no logo, Sunspel or Asket. For Made in Germany, Merz b. Schwanen or Trigema. For streetwear shirts with a print, Represent, Essentials or HUSTLE&PAIN. For little money, Uniqlo U or Los Angeles Apparel.

How much GSM should a good T-shirt have?

For an everyday basic under a shirt or blazer, 150 to 200 g/m² is enough. If you want an oversized or boxy cut that holds its shape, go for 220 to 300.

Are there T-shirts made in Germany?

Yes. Trigema knits, sews and finishes in Baden-Württemberg, and Merz b. Schwanen knits its THE ORIGINALS line on loopwheel machines in Germany.

What is a loopwheel T-shirt?

A shirt made from fabric that is knitted as a tube on a slow-running circular knitting machine, and therefore needs no side seams. Merz b. Schwanen knits on machines like these, some of them over 100 years old.

Is an expensive T-shirt worth it?

Work it out per wear: €110, worn a hundred times, is €1.10 per wear. A €10 shirt that lets its collar sag after twenty washes costs only €0.50 per wear, but looks worse for most of that time.

In Detail: Twelve Brands, Four Groups

The Sunspel shirt costs €110 in the German shop. The Los Angeles Apparel shop shows a shirt at 220 g/m², knitted, cut, sewn and dyed in Los Angeles, at €27.95 when opened from Germany. Both are well made. With T-shirts, price says less about quality than about how the shirt is built, and this list is sorted by exactly that: twelve brands in four groups, with origin, fabric weight and price, as far as the brands state them themselves (as of 18 October 2026).

Heavyweight T-Shirt Brands: Heavy Shirts with Prints

In this group, what counts is how heavy the fabric is and how the print sits. There is no fixed threshold for when a shirt counts as heavyweight. The figures vary between 180 and 220 grams per square metre, more on that in T-shirt GSM explained. US brands state ounces per square yard, and one ounce is roughly 33.9 g/m².

Represent (UK)

In 2011 the brothers George and Mike Heaton founded Represent in Manchester, starting as a college project: with £150 they had 25 shirts printed and sold them to friends. Today Represent has its own shops in London, Manchester and Los Angeles, and the Owners Club T-Shirt is, by the brand's own account, its best-known piece. 220 g/m², garment-dyed and pre-shrunk, an oversized fit that falls wide and boxy, screenprint on chest and back, a small metal logo on the hem, made in Portugal. Represent itself calls the fabric midweight. €110 in the EU shop. If you want oversized with a clearly visible brand, you end up here sooner or later.

Fear of God Essentials (USA)

Essentials has existed since 2018 as a cheaper sister line of Fear of God, the brand of the designer Jerry Lorenzo. His father Jerry Manuel was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the first round in 1972, and baseball runs through the brand to this day: since 2025 Essentials has been making team apparel with Major League Baseball. The Classic Tee is midweight cotton jersey at 220 g/m², with a ribbed collar, the relaxed Fear of God proportions and a soft logo on the front. €96 in the German shop. For people who want calm in their look and a logo all the same.

Carhartt WIP (Europe)

Carhartt began in Detroit in 1889 as a maker of workwear. WIP stands for Work in Progress and is the European continuation: in 1989 the Swiss design couple Edwin and Salomée Faeh decided to represent Carhartt in Europe, first sold the American workwear and in 1994 got the licence for their own collections. From the start the two looked for closeness to graffiti, skateboarding and hip-hop. For T-shirts the Chase line is the way in, which the shop itself lists under Essentials, and the S/S Chase T-Shirt costs €39. That is the shirt for under any jacket.

HUSTLE&PAIN (Germany)

That's us, so read this paragraph with the necessary scepticism. HUSTLE&PAIN is a streetwear brand from Germany that produces in small drops. Most shirts are 300 GSM, all are 100% cotton and cut unisex. Most motifs go on in screenprint, after which many shirts are washed, bleached or distressed. Right now we do almost all of the screen printing and bleaching ourselves, by hand. ENERGY is a little lighter at 250 GSM: relaxed fit, Washed Black with a heavy vintage wash, a yellow exclamation mark in screenprint, made in Portugal. LIKE KURT is the heavy counterpart: 300 GSM, oversized, grey, with a sun-faded wash and bleached patches.

We are the wrong address for a plain white shirt with no motif for the office. Every shirt of ours has a motif, a visible wash or both, and because the quantities are small, a size is sometimes gone. All the heavy cuts are in the Heavyweight T-Shirts collection.

Premium T-Shirt Brands: The Basic with No Logo

Here the one who shows least wins. No print, no logo. What is left is yarn and collar, and there you see every flaw.

Sunspel (UK)

Thomas Hill founded the company in Nottingham in 1860, then the centre of the English lace and hosiery industry, and made underwear there from cotton, merino wool and silk. At the start of the 20th century, undershirts in Sea Island cotton were added, intended for hot climates and among the very first T-shirts. Sunspel itself dates its first luxury T-shirt to 1908. In 1937 production moved to Long Eaton, where it still is. The Classic T-Shirt is made there by hand: extra-long-staple Supima cotton from a single farm in California, a fabric of its own called Q82, twelve stages and fifteen checks. Cut slim and light, more a shirt for under a blazer than under a leather jacket. €110. Better known, as it happens, is a polo: Daniel Craig wore the brand's Riviera polo in 2006 in “Casino Royale”.

Asket (Sweden)

The T-shirt was the first piece from Asket of Stockholm in 2015. It is knitted, cut and sewn in northern Portugal, in factories with which, by the brand's own account, it has been refining its jersey for over ten years. The result is 180 g/m² organic cotton with long fibres, a straight cut and three lengths. That sounds minor until, at 1.95 metres tall, you pull on a shirt that doesn't end above your belt for the first time. €50.

Colorful Standard (Denmark)

A Danish brand, based in Copenhagen according to its legal notice, sewn in its own factory in Barcelos, Portugal. The shirts are garment dyed, so sewn first and dyed afterwards, which gives the colours a slightly washed tone. The name says what it is about. The Classic Organic Tee costs €35, the Heavy Organic Boxy Tee at 240 g/m² €50. For €50 that is a seriously heavy shirt that has no trouble with wide trousers.

T-Shirt Brands from Germany: Made in Germany Still Exists

A German brand doesn't automatically mean German production. These two really do knit here.

Merz b. Schwanen

In 1911 Balthasar Merz founded a company in the Swabian Alb that knitted workers' shirts and underwear on loopwheel machines. In 2010, 99 years later, the designers Gitta and Peter Plotnicki found an old Henley by the company at a Berlin flea market and brought brand and machines back. Today Merz b. Schwanen is based in Berlin.

Loopwheelers are circular knitting machines that run very slowly and knit the fabric as a tube, and some at Merz are over 100 years old. The 215 from the THE ORIGINALS line is made this way in Germany: 245 g/m² organic cotton, a close-fitting tubular cut, small gussets under the arms. The brand itself advises going a size up. €105. Jeremy Allen White wears exactly this white shirt as the chef Carmy in the series “The Bear”, which the brand writes on the product page itself. Since 2016, however, Merz has had part of the collection made by a family business in Portugal. So the label tells you whether a shirt comes from Germany.

Trigema

If you want everything from knitting to finishing in Germany, you end up in Burladingen. Trigema, founded in 1919, knits the fabrics, finishes them, cuts, sews and refines at three sites in Baden-Württemberg: Burladingen, Altshausen and Rangendingen. Since 2024 Wolfgang and Bonita Grupp have run the family business in the fourth generation. Trigema has little to do with streetwear, and all the more to do with a solid cotton shirt from a single source.

Affordable T-Shirt Brands That Still Deliver

Two of the three cheap shirts here come from companies that also supply retailers and print shops. Plus a Japanese brand with a Paris design studio.

Uniqlo U

In 2016 Uniqlo made the French designer Christophe Lemaire artistic director of its new research and design centre in Paris, which is where the Uniqlo U line comes from. Its Crew Neck T-Shirt is heavy cotton jersey with thick yarn, and NBC Select praises the boxy, short cut in its test. As the lowest price of the last 30 days, the German shop gives €12.90. For a first boxy fit without the risk, this is the sensible way in.

Los Angeles Apparel (USA)

The 1801 is knitted, cut, sewn and dyed in Los Angeles, from American cotton, at 220 g/m² or 6.5 ounces. Because it is dyed only after sewing, it barely shrinks any more and feels worn-in from the first day. The yarn is open-end, grippier than ring-spun, which suits the vintage look, and the ribbed collar sits high. Opened from Germany, the brand's own shop shows €27.95.

Camber (USA)

Camber Sportswear of Norristown, Pennsylvania supplies the trade only, and its shirts are built for printing and embroidering. The Max-Weight weighs 8 ounces, so a good 270 g/m², 100% cotton, made in the USA, in sizes up to 6XL. Camber gives no price on its website. As a private customer you need a retailer that resells it, and Camber itself lists two. The search is worth it for one of the heaviest shirts on this list.

How to Tell a Good T-Shirt Brand

All the brands above have one thing in common: they say what their shirt is made of. That is already the first test. What separates high-quality men's T-shirts from mass-market ones you can see in five places.

GSM: Weight Is Character, Not a Grade

GSM stands for grams per square metre of fabric. As a rough guide: under 160 is light and flowing, 160 to 220 the middle, heavyweight begins at around 220, and at 300 the fabric almost stands up by itself. Ounces times 33.9 gives roughly grams. More weight means a different feel when worn, not automatically better quality, which is why the light Sunspel sits in this list next to the heavy Camber. Everything about the numbers is in T-shirt GSM explained.

Cotton: Fibre Length and Yarn

Long fibres like Supima or Pima can be spun finer and firmer, so the shirt comes out smoother and pills less. Ring-spun and combed yarn is soft and even, open-end yarn grippier, which can be intended on vintage shirts. If the product page says only “100% cotton”, you still know almost nothing.

Seams: Side Seam or Tube

A tubular shirt like the Merz 215 manages without side seams that could twist in the wash. Shirts with a side seam can instead be cut more freely, which is an advantage for boxy and oversized cuts. The test comes after the first wash: if the side seam wanders to the front, the fabric was cut crooked or not properly pre-treated.

Collar: The Part That Gives Up First

Pull the collar gently apart in the shop. If it springs straight back, the rib is knitted dense. A neck tape on the inside, a strip of fabric over the seam from shoulder to shoulder, holds the shape even better. A collar that goes wavy after the third wash turns even an expensive shirt into a sleep shirt.

Print: Thumb Across, Phone Up Close

With graphic tees, the print counts as much as the fabric. Screenprint lays down rich colour that, when properly cured, lasts as long as the shirt. Digital printing pays off from a single piece, but DTG often looks flatter on dark fabric, and DTF feels like a thin film. Zoom in on the print with your phone: full areas of colour with sharp edges point to screenprint. The complete checklist is in How to Spot a High-Quality T-Shirt, and you'll find all our cuts in the T-Shirts collection.

You throw the sticker from Long Eaton away after unpacking. Whether the inspection was any good, the collar tells you after many washes.

Sources31

1. Sunspel: Klassisches T-Shirt in Weiß (product page, accessed 18.10.2026)
2. Wikipedia: Sunspel (English)
3. Represent: Our Story (English)
4. Manchester Evening News, on representclo.com: From Horwich to Hollywood, the amazing story of two brothers behind multi-million pound fashion business Represent (23.07.2021, English)
5. Represent: Owners Club T-Shirt Schwarz (product page EU shop, accessed 18.10.2026)
6. Wikipedia: Jerry Lorenzo (English)
7. Wikipedia: Jerry Manuel (English)
8. MLB.com: MLB expands its fashion reach with Fear of God partnership (15.09.2025, English)
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30. Camber Sportswear: About (English)
31. Camber Sportswear: Max-Weight (English)