Fabric
What GSM should your hoodie be?
GSM — grams per square metre — is the single number that decides whether your hoodie feels like a premium heavyweight or a promotional giveaway. It is also the number most first-time brands guess at. Here is what each weight actually does on the body, and the one piece of fine print that catches people out.
What the number actually measures
GSM is the weight of one square metre of the fabric. It is not thickness, and it is not quality — it is mass. A dense, tightly knit 320 GSM French terry can feel more substantial than a loosely knit 380, because the yarn is packed differently. That is why weight alone never settles a fabric decision, and why we send a swatch rather than a number when you are choosing.
What GSM does tell you reliably is how the garment will hang. Lower weights fall and cling; higher weights hold their own shape. That is the whole trade-off.
The weights, and what each one is for
If you are chasing the oversized, squared-off silhouette that defines most current streetwear, 350–400 GSM in a tight-knit French terry or fleece is where it lives. That range is heavy enough that the shoulder seam sits where you put it instead of collapsing, and the hem stands slightly away from the body rather than clinging.
| Weight | What it does |
|---|---|
| 180 GSM | Light tee territory. Drapes, breathes, shows body line. |
| 240 GSM | Heavy tee. Holds a printed graphic without the fabric curling. |
| 300–340 GSM | The joggers-and-sets range. Substantial without bulk. |
| 320 GSM | Standard hoodie weight. Soft, familiar, drapes at the hem. |
| 350–400 GSM | The structured, boxy streetwear look. Holds a shoulder line. |
| 500 GSM | A statement piece. Heavy, dense, deliberately imposing. |
Where heavier stops being better
Above 500 GSM, fabric gets stiff. It stops moving with the wearer and starts resisting them — the hood holds a shape it was not asked to hold, the cuffs feel like cardboard until several washes in, and the piece reads as costume rather than clothing.
Heavier also costs more in three separate places: the fabric itself, the freight (weight is chargeable), and the sewing, because dense fabric is slower to handle. If the extra 100 GSM is not doing something visible for the wearer, it is spending money where the customer cannot see it.
The tolerance nobody mentions
Fabric is made on machines, from natural fibre, in rooms with weather. It varies. About ±5% is normal mill variance, and any factory telling you their 400 GSM is exactly 400 GSM every time is telling you something that is not true of textile manufacturing.
What is not variance is a 20–30% drop. That is a different roll — a cheaper one — and it is one of the most common ways a bulk order quietly fails to match the sample that sold it.
The check is simple, and you can ask any factory to do it: weigh a swatch cut from the actual bulk roll, before cutting, and share the number next to the sample's. We do that as standard and send you both figures. It takes minutes and it removes the single biggest source of "the bulk didn't feel like the sample".
How to decide without guessing
Do not pick a number off a spec sheet. Name the feeling you want — structured and boxy, or soft and draping — and the season and market it ships to, and ask for swatches at two weights either side of the recommendation. Hold them. The difference between 320 and 400 is obvious in the hand and invisible on a screen.
Then lock the number into your spec sheet, because the weight is the reference the bulk roll gets weighed against.
Questions this raises
What GSM is best for an oversized, boxy hoodie?
350–400 GSM in a tight-knit French terry or fleece. That range holds the structured shoulder line and squared silhouette without becoming stiff. Above 500 GSM the fabric stops draping and starts to feel rigid.
How much GSM variation is normal in bulk production?
About ±5% is normal mill variance. A 20–30% drop means a different roll, not variance. We weigh a swatch from your bulk roll before cutting and share the number beside your sample's.
Will a cotton hoodie shrink after washing?
Our fabric is pre-shrunk before cutting, so the after-wash size matches your size chart. The care label specifies cold wash and low tumble.