Fabric tag printing on underwear has been around for some time now and yet some underwear, T-shirt and under garment manufacturers (NorthFace I’m looking at you) still feel compelled to sew one, two or even three! flopping tags directly into the fabric seam where they can flop around and scratch the hell out of you? Cut them off … sure now you have stiff little edges along the seam ready to saw at you.
Fabric printing isn’t rocket science at this point, why do they still do this even with premium brands? The mass market 7 pairs for $10 underwear manufacturers that sell at Walmart seem to have figured this out some time ago, why can’t manufacturers that scream about how high tech and premium their stuff is do the same?
Yes. It befuddles. I get the whole tag thing, especially the ones containing cleaning instructions, but most feel like they’re made of flattened wicker or stiff plastic. Why not something silky smooth? Or no tag at all?
I wear my T-shirts — which I use in preference to vests, which are fugly — inside-out, so all the seams are out too. In situations where they could be seen, I wouldn’t be wearing them anyway.
As tiny kids they had a fashion for those hideous armless string vests, Norwegian-style. That got old fast.
I prefer the tags. You can tell if the garment is inside out by feel, and I’ve never found them to be scratchy. It’s a solution for a nonexistant problem.
Manufacturers don’t often show the inside of underwear either on the ad copy or when the product is in the packaging, and there isn’t an easy source of information on what underwear has tags and what doesn’t. Now, if you’ve been buying Hanes brand tighty-whities for thirty years and are still complaining about tags, you’re beyond help.
(I don’t know if Hanes have tags, it’s just an example)
Even before the tags that were directly a part of the main fabric, Hanes had tags sewn in the waistband. Same with Fruit-of-the-Loom and Jockey–the other brands I remember wearing.
Are there really underwear companies who do floppy tags?
I used to wear a brand of bra which seemed to be stitched together with fishing line. I know it wasn’t but it was some clear thread which scratched the hell out of my back. These bras weren’t cheap and I bloody hated being injured by something I had to wear next to my skin. Found a different (not scratching) brand and I’ve never looked back.
I don’t find the tags to be scratchy either, but I don’t doubt that some people are more sensitive than I am. Also, I’ve found that some tags are stiffer than others.
Sometimes printed tags have their own problems. I bought a few T-shirts made of some breathable “high-tech” fabric, and the tags were printed with some kind of rubbery ink that made them stick when I sweated and drove me crazy. I ended up sewing microfiber patches over them.
Man, I called this one wrong, I was pretty sure this as a zombie thread with a unknowing doper inadvertently stumbling into the realm of the undead coming in to say that they can get tag-less clothes and being attacked by brain eaters.
Anyway the tags don’t bother me most of the time, and do like the easy to see ‘this is the inside back’ indication that tags provide, but think I will adapt to tagless.
I do think the move to tagless will result into more people wearing clothing insideout and/or even backwards.
Also agree with the above Son of a Rich:
Yes those rubbery things are horrid. They were all the rage in school, but they were so irritating to me I had to wear 2 shirts, one plain under the one I really liked as it not to cause problems which was actually painful.
The tags on most garments drive me mad. Especially those on the back of my neck. The first thing I have to do is remove them. Fine if they are loosely stitched, but those which are stitched into the making are impossible to get off neatly. I check now and it will affect my purchase.
I am not particularly picky on other aspects of clothes - this is my major bugbear.
Why oh why do manufacturers always put big ugly tags sewn tightly to the neck on silk blouses? God, why? They want me to buy their product but like you I’ll pass it by if it’s impossible to get off of a delicate piece of fabric.
I believe the thread deals with any type of undergarments (t-shirts, bras, longjohns, etc) but I would not put it past someone to put one in their brand of boxers just because they’re dolts. And even with the traditional sewn-flat-into-the-waistband type, you’d ocassionally run into some cheapskate manufacturer who’d use cheap, stiff material and single-stitch it so that the corners of the label were free to come partly loose and fold and scratch. Or like **jabiru **mentioned, stitched with some very stiff thread so that if it started to unravel or fray it would poke at you.
And ISTM the issue is not so much that tags are or are not used but the material and form of attachment. I have on right now a t-shirt with a tag, but the tag is made of a very soft nylon sort of material and looped, ends attached to the seam, so there are no corners as such. Back of my neck can’t tell it’s there. OTOH the other day I had one with a tag sewn on the lower side alittle above the waist, of a sort of plasticky paper like they use for newfangled banknotes in many countries, and I could not wait to tear it off.