The T-shirt is Good Good Good’s core item and the product that the brand’s founder and creative director, Daniel Sher, has been producing, refining and selling since 2012. In 2023, Courier Magazine referred to the T-shirt as Daniel’s “life’s work”, and while Daniel himself would prefer to reserve this title for his efforts to be a good father and husband instead, it’s undeniable that his name has become synonymous with the T-shirt in the South African fashion industry. Daniel has undertaken the life-long mission to make the best possible T-shirt. In many ways, this is an impossible task, factoring in people’s natural differences in shape, preference and opinion, but the success of our T-shirts is derived from how we have adapted to all of these possible divergences and variations of what might be regarded as “the best possible T-shirt.” We constantly produce and continue to refine our selection of tees, consisting of four different cuts, and sizes running from 3XS to 5XL. In alignment with the brand’s motto, for every body, anyone can find their best possible T-shirt in our selection to wear as a functional everyday basic, irrespective of their shape or size. To help you better understand our story and mission, this article presents a guide to our current T-shirt selection and its history.
Daniel’s mission has led him on a long road to arrive at our four current trusty silhouettes. At times, it has been an arduous one, evidenced in his first brand me.plus.one’s original poly-cotton blend T-shirts featuring low and wide necklines and self-fabric neckbands. While the beginnings of Daniel’s T-shirt mission are humble, the resources and industry knowledge he started with starkly contrast what he has at his disposal now. Today, our heritage manufacturing facility, Together MFG, is stacked with 500m rolls of single-jersey cotton and ribbing waiting to be turned into T-shirts. When he started, Daniel couldn’t afford manufacturing orders for material and had to settle for whatever was on his suppliers’ shelves, sometimes forced to compromise on cotton quality and weight to get ribbing that matched the fabric.
While those initial me.plus.one tees would look alien if they were dropped into the mix of Good Good Good’s current selection, their importance shouldn’t be discounted. Through the amendment of those initial designs and with improved industry knowhow, Daniel’s last T-shirt for me.plus.one would become Good Good Good’s first in 2016 – the Regular Fit T-Shirt. This was the first 100% cotton T-shirt that Daniel produced, sourcing from the same supplier that we still use eight years on. Since then we have embraced and supported a fully local supply chain. The cotton textile that we use is milled in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia, spun into yarn in Pietermaritzburg, woven into fabric in Atlantis in the Western Cape, and eventually cut, made and sewn in our factory in Woodstock.
As the oldest silhouette in our selection, the Regular Tee is a product of its time. It’s our traditional James Dean-type T-shirt and the closest cut we have to a slim-fitting tee because of its wide neckline, narrow neckband, the shortest sleeves in our collection, and of course, its snugger fit on the body, although it still offers room for movement. While initially only being made with a 160gsm cotton, its weight graduated to 180gsm when Daniel discovered it was the lightest single-jersey weight that isn’t transparent and remains durable over time. The neckline has also been tightened slightly to eradicate any remaining me.plus.one influence, and the neckband itself has been made a tad chunkier. We didn’t sell Regular tees in store for a five-year stint while fitted silhouettes were slowly being phased out by baggier ones, but they’ve made a return at the request of many of our original customers. Despite their in-store absence, we were cooking up hundreds of Regular tees in the factory for other businesses, mostly as staff uniforms. With the collaboration of numerous clients over the years who amended the silhouette to their liking, we’ve arrived at the best possible Regular tee, having found a sweet spot for its dimensions.
In 2017, we doubled the number of T-shirt silhouettes in our catalogue with the Box T-Shirt, our take on the classic streetwear/workwear tee. As its name implies, its body has a boxy, rectangular shape with squarer and longer sleeves than the Regular. The Box T-Shirt was the first of our T-shirt silhouette to ever get sent down the runway in a Good Good Good fashion show. At SA Menswear Week 2017 in Cape Town, our first look featured the Broken Hearts Club T-Shirt – a white Box tee sporting a red illustrated print designed by Jana Hannam. The T-shirt became one of our best-selling products, and since then, each of our subsequent runway shows has been opened with a T-shirt too.
When we first released the Box T-Shirt, many of our customers asked why the body of the garment fit so long. In response, we would tell them that Daniel based the initial pattern of the Box tee on his own lanky dimensions, causing the original T-shirt to be quite long in the body. That’s only half of the true story, though. To let you in on a little secret, the length of the T-shirt was also motivated by Daniel’s hatred for plumber’s crack, and a crucial part of his scheme to wipe it off the face of the earth. However, when we opened Duck Duck Goose and started offering individual T-shirt amendments to customers, we found that while the Box tee prevented Daniel’s plumber’s crack comfortably, it overcompensated on those who didn’t share his proportions (basically everyone). Every day, we would get requests to have various lengths of material taken off the bodies of our Box T-Shirts. Daniel eventually, albeit hesitantly, decided to remove 5cm from the pattern – the most length that he scientifically proved he could remove while staying true to his plan. The neckline has also been tightened to ensure that it maintains its shape for longer, and while the sleeves on the short-sleeve Box T-Shirt haven’t been altered, many past customers have thought that the sleeves of the long-sleeve version were too long. Which long-armed individual do you think made the pattern for those as well? Subsequently, we removed all our long-sleeves from the store, unpicked their cuffs, cut the sleeves shorter, and resewed them. Our Box long-sleeves are now made with shorter sleeves, and we are currently working on making the sleeves baggier as well. The long-sleeves are due to make a return one day.
By the time we released our next silhouette, the Raglan T-Shirt, we had two tried and tested traditional T-shirts. We were looking to produce a more fashion-forward alternative, and while the Raglan is far from avant-garde, its silhouette tows the line between uniqueness and timelessness. Its diagonally-seamed sleeves and square cropped body make the Raglan more eye-catching than the traditional T-shirt and make it allow for more bodily movement. Mobility was the original intention behind the raglan silhouette’s initial design in the 19th century, which is the reason why it’s popularly used in sports like baseball and athletics. While the silhouette has come a long way since then, our contributions have included the tightening of its neckline, the cropping of its length, and the garment’s overall structure. Daniel passionately took up about ten minutes of airtime on his Maak ‘n Plan interview to talk about the mysterious warping of our Raglan’s neckband in the past, which we have since gotten under control. The Raglan is associated with some beautiful moments for Good Good Good. Its release coincided with the campaign that we shot for 2021’s Hope Collection in collaboration with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra. It was also the cut that a certain LVMH-owned brand chose to use when we manufactured their collaboration with a certain South African designer in 2022. Our consultations with them helped us to improve our garment construction and get the Raglan to the standard it’s at today.
The Heavy T-Shirt is the latest addition to our selection. It looks like the T-shirt that your neighbourhood’s local heavies would wear. Its wider and more cropped body, dropped shoulders, and broader, longer sleeves give the wearer a presence that demands being taken seriously. The Heavy is the most synonymous with the Duck Duck Goose era. Since their arrival, the rails at our flagship store have filled up with Heavy T-Shirts, which have become our cut of choice for graphic tees, as the width of the body lends itself to bold screen-prints. The introduction of the Heavy was also a fashion-forward choice amidst the rise of oversized T-shirts in recent years, and while our take on the trend is definitely big and weighty, its size and silhouette do not make it a comical fashion statement. Instead, the Heavy Tee still functions as an everyday basic that can be worn true-to-size for ultimate loose-fitting comfort or sized down to fit closer to the body. We’re very pleased with how it’s been received by our customers so far, and we haven’t fiddled with its original design yet. However, as with all our T-shirts, we welcome feedback from our community to find ways to improve it.
Daniel and the Good Good Good team have always remain focused on making the best possible functional everyday basic T-shirt, that is comfortable, durable and timeless. As our business has grown, we have more capacity to produce more silhouettes, and possibly most crucially, more units of each. By putting more T-shirts into the world and fostering a communicative relationship with our customers, we’ve created a community to collaborate with in our insane undertaking to construct the best possible T-shirts for every body. If you have ever purchased a T-shirt from us, or even tried one on and told us how it felt, we thank you for being a part of our story. We’ve come this far together, and we look forward to continue our journey and figure this out with you.
“I always say that when Good Good Good is quiet, that is when we are the busiest”, said Daniel Sher, founder and director of the Cape Town-based fashion label, about the two-year silence that their customers have endured since the brand’s last collection in 2022. With the imminent online launch of Good Good Good’s new …
For the store’s third birthday in December 2023, we decided to collaborate with two legendary forces in the South African fashion retail space, in Shelflife and Baseline Skate Shop. These collaborations symbolise a point of reflection and a change in outlook for our three-year-old store, turning our heads away from matters of survival and towards …
When I spoke to illustrator Shaun Hill about Bat Butt for the blog two months ago, he said something about collaborating with other artists on his zines that stuck with me. Shaun told me that “Out of every three people that you ask for work, two will say yes and only one will send you …
A Guide to Good Good Good’s Best Possible T-Shirt(s)
The T-shirt is Good Good Good’s core item and the product that the brand’s founder and creative director, Daniel Sher, has been producing, refining and selling since 2012. In 2023, Courier Magazine referred to the T-shirt as Daniel’s “life’s work”, and while Daniel himself would prefer to reserve this title for his efforts to be a good father and husband instead, it’s undeniable that his name has become synonymous with the T-shirt in the South African fashion industry. Daniel has undertaken the life-long mission to make the best possible T-shirt. In many ways, this is an impossible task, factoring in people’s natural differences in shape, preference and opinion, but the success of our T-shirts is derived from how we have adapted to all of these possible divergences and variations of what might be regarded as “the best possible T-shirt.” We constantly produce and continue to refine our selection of tees, consisting of four different cuts, and sizes running from 3XS to 5XL. In alignment with the brand’s motto, for every body, anyone can find their best possible T-shirt in our selection to wear as a functional everyday basic, irrespective of their shape or size. To help you better understand our story and mission, this article presents a guide to our current T-shirt selection and its history.
Daniel’s mission has led him on a long road to arrive at our four current trusty silhouettes. At times, it has been an arduous one, evidenced in his first brand me.plus.one’s original poly-cotton blend T-shirts featuring low and wide necklines and self-fabric neckbands. While the beginnings of Daniel’s T-shirt mission are humble, the resources and industry knowledge he started with starkly contrast what he has at his disposal now. Today, our heritage manufacturing facility, Together MFG, is stacked with 500m rolls of single-jersey cotton and ribbing waiting to be turned into T-shirts. When he started, Daniel couldn’t afford manufacturing orders for material and had to settle for whatever was on his suppliers’ shelves, sometimes forced to compromise on cotton quality and weight to get ribbing that matched the fabric.
While those initial me.plus.one tees would look alien if they were dropped into the mix of Good Good Good’s current selection, their importance shouldn’t be discounted. Through the amendment of those initial designs and with improved industry knowhow, Daniel’s last T-shirt for me.plus.one would become Good Good Good’s first in 2016 – the Regular Fit T-Shirt. This was the first 100% cotton T-shirt that Daniel produced, sourcing from the same supplier that we still use eight years on. Since then we have embraced and supported a fully local supply chain. The cotton textile that we use is milled in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia, spun into yarn in Pietermaritzburg, woven into fabric in Atlantis in the Western Cape, and eventually cut, made and sewn in our factory in Woodstock.
As the oldest silhouette in our selection, the Regular Tee is a product of its time. It’s our traditional James Dean-type T-shirt and the closest cut we have to a slim-fitting tee because of its wide neckline, narrow neckband, the shortest sleeves in our collection, and of course, its snugger fit on the body, although it still offers room for movement. While initially only being made with a 160gsm cotton, its weight graduated to 180gsm when Daniel discovered it was the lightest single-jersey weight that isn’t transparent and remains durable over time. The neckline has also been tightened slightly to eradicate any remaining me.plus.one influence, and the neckband itself has been made a tad chunkier. We didn’t sell Regular tees in store for a five-year stint while fitted silhouettes were slowly being phased out by baggier ones, but they’ve made a return at the request of many of our original customers. Despite their in-store absence, we were cooking up hundreds of Regular tees in the factory for other businesses, mostly as staff uniforms. With the collaboration of numerous clients over the years who amended the silhouette to their liking, we’ve arrived at the best possible Regular tee, having found a sweet spot for its dimensions.
In 2017, we doubled the number of T-shirt silhouettes in our catalogue with the Box T-Shirt, our take on the classic streetwear/workwear tee. As its name implies, its body has a boxy, rectangular shape with squarer and longer sleeves than the Regular. The Box T-Shirt was the first of our T-shirt silhouette to ever get sent down the runway in a Good Good Good fashion show. At SA Menswear Week 2017 in Cape Town, our first look featured the Broken Hearts Club T-Shirt – a white Box tee sporting a red illustrated print designed by Jana Hannam. The T-shirt became one of our best-selling products, and since then, each of our subsequent runway shows has been opened with a T-shirt too.
When we first released the Box T-Shirt, many of our customers asked why the body of the garment fit so long. In response, we would tell them that Daniel based the initial pattern of the Box tee on his own lanky dimensions, causing the original T-shirt to be quite long in the body. That’s only half of the true story, though. To let you in on a little secret, the length of the T-shirt was also motivated by Daniel’s hatred for plumber’s crack, and a crucial part of his scheme to wipe it off the face of the earth. However, when we opened Duck Duck Goose and started offering individual T-shirt amendments to customers, we found that while the Box tee prevented Daniel’s plumber’s crack comfortably, it overcompensated on those who didn’t share his proportions (basically everyone). Every day, we would get requests to have various lengths of material taken off the bodies of our Box T-Shirts. Daniel eventually, albeit hesitantly, decided to remove 5cm from the pattern – the most length that he scientifically proved he could remove while staying true to his plan. The neckline has also been tightened to ensure that it maintains its shape for longer, and while the sleeves on the short-sleeve Box T-Shirt haven’t been altered, many past customers have thought that the sleeves of the long-sleeve version were too long. Which long-armed individual do you think made the pattern for those as well? Subsequently, we removed all our long-sleeves from the store, unpicked their cuffs, cut the sleeves shorter, and resewed them. Our Box long-sleeves are now made with shorter sleeves, and we are currently working on making the sleeves baggier as well. The long-sleeves are due to make a return one day.
By the time we released our next silhouette, the Raglan T-Shirt, we had two tried and tested traditional T-shirts. We were looking to produce a more fashion-forward alternative, and while the Raglan is far from avant-garde, its silhouette tows the line between uniqueness and timelessness. Its diagonally-seamed sleeves and square cropped body make the Raglan more eye-catching than the traditional T-shirt and make it allow for more bodily movement. Mobility was the original intention behind the raglan silhouette’s initial design in the 19th century, which is the reason why it’s popularly used in sports like baseball and athletics. While the silhouette has come a long way since then, our contributions have included the tightening of its neckline, the cropping of its length, and the garment’s overall structure. Daniel passionately took up about ten minutes of airtime on his Maak ‘n Plan interview to talk about the mysterious warping of our Raglan’s neckband in the past, which we have since gotten under control. The Raglan is associated with some beautiful moments for Good Good Good. Its release coincided with the campaign that we shot for 2021’s Hope Collection in collaboration with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra. It was also the cut that a certain LVMH-owned brand chose to use when we manufactured their collaboration with a certain South African designer in 2022. Our consultations with them helped us to improve our garment construction and get the Raglan to the standard it’s at today.
The Heavy T-Shirt is the latest addition to our selection. It looks like the T-shirt that your neighbourhood’s local heavies would wear. Its wider and more cropped body, dropped shoulders, and broader, longer sleeves give the wearer a presence that demands being taken seriously. The Heavy is the most synonymous with the Duck Duck Goose era. Since their arrival, the rails at our flagship store have filled up with Heavy T-Shirts, which have become our cut of choice for graphic tees, as the width of the body lends itself to bold screen-prints. The introduction of the Heavy was also a fashion-forward choice amidst the rise of oversized T-shirts in recent years, and while our take on the trend is definitely big and weighty, its size and silhouette do not make it a comical fashion statement. Instead, the Heavy Tee still functions as an everyday basic that can be worn true-to-size for ultimate loose-fitting comfort or sized down to fit closer to the body. We’re very pleased with how it’s been received by our customers so far, and we haven’t fiddled with its original design yet. However, as with all our T-shirts, we welcome feedback from our community to find ways to improve it.
Daniel and the Good Good Good team have always remain focused on making the best possible functional everyday basic T-shirt, that is comfortable, durable and timeless. As our business has grown, we have more capacity to produce more silhouettes, and possibly most crucially, more units of each. By putting more T-shirts into the world and fostering a communicative relationship with our customers, we’ve created a community to collaborate with in our insane undertaking to construct the best possible T-shirts for every body. If you have ever purchased a T-shirt from us, or even tried one on and told us how it felt, we thank you for being a part of our story. We’ve come this far together, and we look forward to continue our journey and figure this out with you.
All illustrations drawn by Ziyaad Samsodien (Flying Duck Design).
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