New York’s Left Field has long been much more than just jeans. They’ve made jackets, shirting, underwear, and for the past several months, tubular knit t-shirts.
The majority of today’s mass-produced tees are cut from large bolts of fabric and sewn back up into shirts–note the seams on the sides. But before the t-shirt had taken over the world, its production was much more elegant. Instead of fusing multiple pieces of fabric together, shirts were made on knitting machines (similar to loopwheelers) that produced long tubes of knit jersey.
This eliminated one step in the cut and sew process and made for a comfier shirt, but also required a different machine to produce each size–a large needed to be a bigger circle than a small–so tube-knitting mostly faded away.
Left Field has revitalized the process and created their own new versions of the classics. Their tube tees come in a variety of colors (white, black, heather grey, olive drab, and navy blue), with or without pockets, and they can even chainstitch embroider dozens of designs onto each shirt.
So get with the designs from the past and pick up a two-pack of shirts. Prices range from $75 to $84 and are available on the Left Field website.
