What acid wash does to a cotton tee, and how to wash one so it stays that way

Acid wash is the look that carries most of the Arssm range. 42 styles carry a wash in their name or their facts, and every one of them arrives looking slightly different from the photograph, because that is what the process does. This page explains the process, what it changes about the fabric, and how to wash the result so it lasts.

The care advice comes from the label, and the label comes from a federal rule that we quote below word for word. Nothing here is a chemistry lesson. It is what you need to know at the machine.

A garment-dyed tee gets its colour after sewing, so the seams and the body take the dye together. Acid wash goes one step further: the mill tumbles the dyed tee with pumice stones soaked in a bleaching agent, and the stones strip colour unevenly wherever they touch. The result is the mottled, faded surface, darker in the folds and lighter on the flat panels.

A gradient wash takes the same idea and aims it: the mill dips or sprays the tee so the colour fades from dark at one end to light at the other. Both appear under Wash on a piece's page, in the maker's own word.

Two consequences follow, and both are features rather than faults. No two tees in a pack are identical, and the tee arrives soft, because the mill's wash was harder than anything a home machine will do.

Mills acid-wash heavy cotton for a reason: a light jersey would not survive the stones. Where the maker states a weight, the page carries it, and the counts are below.

A heavyweight tee holds an oversized shape, drapes rather than clings, and takes longer to dry on a line. A lightweight one is cooler in July and shows the body more. Neither is better, and the page says which you are buying.

The small tag inside the neck follows a federal rule, and the rule is specific about what it has to say. Washing first:

Then the temperature, which is where cotton suffers. The rule defines the plain words so that a label cannot hide behind them:

So a label that says only machine wash tells you hot is fine by the maker. A label that says machine wash cold is telling you it is not, and for an acid-washed tee the colour is the reason: a hot wash keeps stripping what the stones started. Drying is the same shape:

Where an Arssm page states a care fact, it uses the maker's own words, and the table counts the pieces we can confirm today.

The routine that avoids all three is short. Turn the tee inside out, wash cold with soft things, hang or lay flat. If a dryer is unavoidable, low heat and take it out damp.

The rest of the range needs its own paragraph each, because the tee rules do not carry over.

Fleece-lined hoodies and sherpa pullovers have a brushed inside that a hot dryer flattens and pills. Wash inside out, cold, and hang. They take a day on a rack, and that day is the price of a lining that still feels brushed in March.

Faux fur is a pile fabric on a knit backing. It does not go in a machine with anything rough, it never goes in a dryer, and it dries hung on a wide hanger with the pile shaken out while damp. Rain is its enemy: a wet faux fur coat is heavy and takes a day to dry.

Satin pajama sets are polyester and will not shrink, but heat glazes the surface. Cold wash in a mesh bag, hang, and never iron on anything above the synthetics setting.

An acid-washed tee keeps fading, slowly, for as long as you wash it, because the process leaves the surface dye loosened and every wash lifts a little more. Over a year of weekly washes a black tee becomes charcoal and a green one becomes sage. That is the wash doing what it was made to do, and a tee that looked new after fifty washes would be the odd one.

Two habits slow it. Washing inside out keeps the surface off the drum. Washing with like colours keeps the lifted dye from landing on something pale, and it matters more with acid wash than with a plain tee, because more dye lifts.

The colour combinations in a pack fade at different speeds. Dark tees show the change first; beige and grey barely change. If you want the three to keep matching each other, wash the three together, every time.

Heavyweight cotton dries slowly on a rack, and an afternoon is normal. If that afternoon is the problem, a 3-pack is the answer: two on the line and one on your back.

Cotton clothing sold in the United States has to meet a flammability standard, and the standard sorts fabrics into classes. The class that ordinary clothing has to reach is the first one:

Normal flammability means exactly that: cotton burns, a heavyweight tee burns slower than a sheer one, and neither resists fire. Nothing on this site claims otherwise. Keep the plush robes and the faux fur away from a stove and a candle, the way you would any pile fabric.

If a piece is still in doubt, the sizing guide explains why a washed tee stays the size it arrived, and the packs guide explains what you are paying per tee before you decide how many to buy.