#thenathanzed

golden boy 🌻

no one follows me on here and 2/3 of the shirts are currently sold out anyway but i would like to say... im VERY disappointed in nathan zed’s 2019 rerelease of the original good enough shirt collection... like 0/5 stars...

this is completely about the quality of the shirts by the printing company this time around and not the design itself. i don’t know how ~selling shirts~ works but my base assumption is that all the blame is on the printing company and not nathan. it’s a shame that this made me weary of his products, though.

let me start off by saying i love the design of TEXT [FLOWER] TEXT and the message of “good enough” and all the color schemes he’s chosen (white text w red/green flower on black shirt, white on maroon, white on yellow, white text w red/green flower on pink, and white text w white/BLUE flower on red... literally all of them are So Good...) but the quality of these shirts are Bad... really bad....

i think the main reason i feel so frustrated is because i’m a repeat customer! i have an original black shirt from 2017 so i know how good it can be! the hype 2 years ago was real because the product was of genuine high quality. last time i was happy to fork over $30 (including shipping) for such a great shirt. this time around... i genuinely feel scammed out of $50.

[photo IDs: the top shows my email receipt from 5 november 2017 where i ordered 1 good enough black shirt in size medium from dftba at $22.00. the bottom shows my email receipt from 9 july 2019 where i ordered 1 good enough yellow shirt and 1 good enough red shirt, both in size medium from dftba.]

as a quick note, i would like to say that i bought only the black shirt two years ago, and only the yellow and red shirt now. i do not have a direct 2017 to 2019 black shirt comparison or 2017 to 2019 yellow shirt comparison. here i’m comparing 2017 black against 2019 yellow and red.

unfortunately the shirts were disappointing from the very beginning. the first thing i noticed when i took them out of the package was that the design is ironed on. you know, i get it, it’s cheaper to iron a print on a shirt than it is to stitch one in. but you know what? the original black shirt’s design was stitched.

[photo IDs: the top shows a close-up of me folding the black shirt at the flower design. the flower looks like the same material as the rest of the shirt, with the only difference being the color of the fabric. the bottom shows a close-up of me folding the yellow shirt at the flower design. the edges of the flower petal stick out slightly, showing that the flower is not fabric and was added to the shirt later on in production rather than being sewn in.]

if i hadn’t bought the black shirt two years ago, i probably wouldn’t think much of the ironing. i would be disappointed, sure, because ironed designs crack and give the shirt a shorter lifespan and make me feel like i have to Keep Track of my movements. but i have plenty of shirts with ironed designs that i like and wear often. i could look past the ironing if it were the only problem.

it’s not the only problem.

these shirts are thin. i know they’re marketed as a summer collection and people like to wear thin clothes in summer, but again... 2019 rerelease is mocking 2017 original. my old shirt is black AND thicker than the new yellow/red shirts so even if the “summer” shirt marketing had anything to do with it... it don’t buy it. (not to mention that they were marketed as a summer collection in 2017, too.) the yellow is completely see-through. 

[photo ID: two pictures of me holding a small stuffed animal version of rilakkuma, a brown and white bear. on the left, the bear is behind the front layer of the yellow shirt, with the bear’s color pattern visible through the shirt. on the right is an image of the bear unobstructed for comparison.]

yellow being see-through always would’ve been a gamble, especially with online shopping, but the red is also see-through. i know most shirt companies don’t prioritize nipple coverage for women who go braless but hey. i go braless. i’m mixed race white passing so i have light skin. the difference between my skin and my areola colors are visible even in the red shirt. it’s not as obvious as the yellow, but it’s there. (i’m not going to post pictures of that so i guess you can choose to not believe me here but i really wouldn’t put this much effort into lying about this.) i know this can be seen as a “me” problem but. cis men have nipples too? would a man choose to wear this even though he would be flaunting his nipples? even if i did wear a bra, the shirt is so thin that the shape of the bra is visible anyway. ...which doesn’t happen with other unisex cut shirts that i wear.

and you want to know the funniest part? god, i don’t even know how to deal with this information. i suppose it doesn’t really matter if you only plan on buying one shirt but when you have 3 like i now do, it really shows what a shitshow this release is. i bought all the shirts in the same size (M) and they’re all different lengths. i literally can’t make this up.

[photo IDs: three images showing the size differences between the three shirts. black is the smallest, yellow is in the middle, and red is the largest. the top image shows the three shirts hanging sideways in a closet. the middle image shows the shirts hanging facing forwards. the bottom image shows the shirts laying on the floor. there is a fourth image that shows that all of the tags on the shirts are marked with M for medium.]

looking at the tags on the shirts i see that the original (black) was printed by Next Level Apparel and the rereleases (yellow and red) are by Bella Canvas. so, different companies, obviously. i don’t know why the prints are with different companies; i’m guessing dftba as a whole switched printers because it seems strange that nathan as an individual would. (again, not that i know how selling shirts work but we all try to rationalize things.) either way, look at the price difference between 2017 (because, yes, i did screenshot the catalogue page back then) and now:

[photo IDs: the top photo shows the online “good enough” shirt catalogue on dftba.com from november 2017. the black shirt cost $22.00 and the yellow shirt cost $25.00. the bottom photo shows the online “good enough” shirt catalogue on dftba.com from july 2019. the black shirt costs $24.00 and the yellow shirt costs $24.00.]

although the prices are slightly different, a change of $2/$3 on the consumer’s end when the shirts are already selling in the mid twenties doesn’t really signify a difference in production cost. i know the fashion industry is notoriously bad with its slave labor so this isn’t about me wanting to pay less. i would gladly pay more than i did even the first time - as long as i get a high quality product. it takes a lot of trust to shop online for a product i can’t see or touch, and whose return would, at the very least, require me to go to out of my way to stop by the post office and pay shipping.

the good part to all this is that the stitching of the shirt itself was well done. when i say these shirts are bad quality, i do have my own bias in that opinion. what i would consider “good quality” would be a stitched (rather than ironed) design, a unisex shirt that isn’t see-through (because i don’t see the point in a t-shirt that i wouldn’t even wear for 95% of my daily life), and... shirts made under the same brand sizing to actually be the same size ? if you don’t care about any of these things that bother me, then the shirts are otherwise good quality. unfortunately, the sheerness is a complete deal breaker for me, and the other two compound the loss.

🌹 good enough 🌹