District Roots is a British clothing brand that only sell t-shirts at the moment. Hoodies, jumpers (sweaters) and hats are all a-comin’. Maybe. They sent over a t-shirt a while ago and it’s better than I had expected. The reason I say that is, because on their website they use poor quality mockups to display their tees.

I think you can see what I mean by poor quality. But I think I see what’s going on here. I think that they don’t have any stock of printed tees and just print to order with DTG. I could be wrong but the above designs would probably make for a very complex screenprint.

http://youtu.be/3QanxywzUAI

Luckily though, I don’t have anything against DTG. The technology has been getting better and better, creating prints that are more vivid and longer-lasting. And they do make nice soft prints.

District Roots T-Shirt Review

The t-shirt they sent is called Urban Rascal and is a heavy cotton grey t-shirt. Not too heavy and perfect for Okinawa winter. Yes, this one’s a keeper. The print is black and grey and very soft (DTG) with the URBAN RASCAL text at the top almost in the style of those old DYMO label tapes or in a reverse stencil.

Anyway, it looks good. The print is pretty big, as you can see, and the bottom half is covered with buildings, a cityscape. And there are four silhouettes of people dancing/doing parkour. OK, I’m not so sure what they are doing and they are nowhere near to scale but somehow it works.

District Cotton have made a nice t-shirt here. If I had to criticize it, I would say that the straight line at the bottom of the buildings make it look like there is a grey band around the t-shirt. Perhaps it would have looked better if the print had started at the hem.

Branding

Refreshingly, the t-shirt is absent of external branding. There is a tidy red logo printed on the inside under the neck where the care label used to be. (Yep, no care label.)

Pricing

At £25 (just under US$40) I guess it’s not exactly a bargain but it’s not crazy either.

Extras

They sent the t-shirt in a custom mailer which is a nice touch. It’s not something that you can really keep but I like this kind of detail.

What I am not so interested in though is the wristband that they included. I’m not so sure why anyone apart from the owners of the brand would be interested in wearing a rubber wristband with the name and url of what is still a pretty obscure t-shirt brand. I probably wouldn’t wear it anyway but perhaps if it had some type of inspirational message/quote? Not that you’re interested but you can buy one for £2.

Wrap-up

Nice heavy cotton DTG t-shirt. If the print fades it’ll still look good, maybe even better. A little expensive.

Link: District Roots