Breathes well, takes hot washing and creases fast, which makes it the everyday default.
Also called: 100% cotton, cotton blend, micro cotton
The basics
What to know about cotton
Cotton is a natural fiber that grows around the seeds of the cotton plant. It is almost pure cellulose, the same material as paper and wood. Cellulose holds water: cotton carries about 8.5 percent of its own weight in moisture at room conditions without feeling damp at all, and far more once you sweat.
Air passes through cotton cloth easily, so it feels cool in dry heat, but the fiber has almost no springback. Bend it and it stays bent, which is why a cotton shirt shows creases across the lap twenty minutes into a meeting. Wet cotton is the real weakness. Soaked fabric takes water in and gives warmth up, so a drenched cotton tee on a cold hike chills you where a synthetic layer would not.
Heat does not melt cotton, it only scorches it above roughly 200 C. The fiber takes the hottest iron setting and a hot wash without harm. Shrinkage is the catch. Untreated cotton knit pulls in 3 to 5 percent on its first hot wash, mostly in length, and once gone that length never returns. Look for preshrunk or sanforized on the label, which holds movement near 1 percent, then wash warm and dry low anyway.
Yarn quality separates two tees of the same weight. Long staple cotton, spun from fibers about 28 millimeters and longer, makes a smoother, stronger yarn with fewer loose ends to tangle into pills. Combed and ring spun both mean the short fibers were pulled out before spinning. Both are worth the small premium on anything you wear weekly.
In photos
Cotton on real products
See this option on different products. Open a photo for a larger view, or select the name to read its guide.
Cotton grows as a fluffy boll around the seeds of a shrub in hot, sunny regions. Picking machines strip the bolls, and a gin then tears the fiber away from the seed and presses it into bales. Mills open the bales and card the fiber into a loose parallel web. They comb out the short pieces for finer yarns. The result is twisted into thread that goes to a loom or a knitting machine.
Almost every finished cotton fabric is bleached, dyed and finished after that. Mercerizing soaks the cloth in caustic soda under tension, which swells the fiber so it takes dye deeper and gains a slight shine. Compacting steams and squeezes the cloth to shrink it before you do, and that is what preshrunk means on a tag. Those finishing steps explain why two tees of identical weight and fiber feel nothing alike in the hand.
Best for
When it works well
Daily tees, shirts and underwear suit it because the fiber survives repeated hot washing without losing strength.
Hot dry weather works in its favor, since air moves through the cloth and evaporating sweat cools the skin underneath.
Sensitive skin tolerates it well, because cotton is smooth cellulose with no scales to prickle the way wool can.
Tight budgets stretch further here, as cotton needs no dry cleaning, no wool detergent and no mesh bag.
Anyone learning to iron gets an easy start, because the fiber takes the highest heat on the dial without melting.
