Indestructible T-shirt

T shirts used to be sturdy pieces of workwear. They were clothes with weight and substance – and basically the opposite of most t shirts today. Introduced by the US Navy in 1913, they were designed to cope with sweat, salt and hard work below deck. So they were quickly adopted by dockers, factory hands and labourers who needed something cheap, tough and easy to wash. So today, just over a century later, we've created The Indestructible T Shirt – a heavy duty, hardcore t shirt knitted with the world's strongest fibre™.

Our Indestructible range includes a belt that can hold up a Cybertruck while being attacked by a flamethrower, the world's strongest puffer jacket, jeans that can withstand 75kmph falls… and now, ridiculously strong t shirts.

While a lot of our other Indestructible gear uses 100% Dyneema®, you simply can't do that with a t shirt. Instead it turns out the perfect balance point is actually 5% Dyneema® woven into a super heavy duty cotton blend engineered in Japan. This gets you a t shirt that can pass abrasion resistance tests no t shirt should ever pass, while feeling like your favourite t shirt you've had for years.

Dyneema® is the single strongest fibre in the world today – an ultra‑high molecular weight polyethylene engineered for extreme strength and abrasion resistance. On a weight‑for‑weight basis it's up to 15x stronger than steel and around 40% stronger than high‑strength aramid fibres like Kevlar. It's so tough that it's used in body armour, anti‑ballistic panels on the sides of tanks, and in the mooring lines that hold deep‑water oil rigs in place during violent icy storms.

Having already used Dyneema® to build jackets, belts, and pants, we're now using it to build t shirts. Because when you blend it into cotton you get a fabric that's far more resistant to rips, holes and long‑term wear than any standard t shirt. To test this we put the material through the Martindale abrasion test, which simulates years of wear by rubbing the surface in what is called a Lissajous figure – a multi-directional figure of eight – until the fibres start to break down. Most fabrics are tested to 20,000 cycles. We ran ours to 100,000 cycles and the fabric showed no signs of wear.

The Dyneema® in The Indestructible T Shirt isn't used as a stiff outer layer. Instead we blend it with the cotton at yarn level before the fabric is even knitted. So you can't really see it and you certainly can't feel it. In fact the only way you know the Dyneema® is in there is the occasional white mark in the fabric, which gives the t shirt a classic marl appearance.

If you've come across Dyneema® in ultralight back packs, tarps and tents, you know it can feel and sound a bit like paper. This isn't that. The Indestructible T Shirt feels like a proper cotton tee. It's soft against the skin, quiet when you move, and with the kind of drape you'd expect from a well‑made jersey.

The Indestructible T Shirt has a super relaxed fit with a slightly wider sleeve. The shoulder seam is displaced off the top of the shoulder so it sits more comfortably under straps and harnesses, while the hems and sleeves are cover stitched with twin‑needle stitching for long‑term stability. Every structural seam is stitched with continuous‑filament polyester thread from Amann in Germany – the same kind of thread normally reserved for technical outerwear and footwear. It means the seams are as durable as the fabric they're holding together.

If you end up somewhere freezing, the Indestructible T Shirt has hidden strengths. Dyneema® gains strength as temperatures drop, which is one reason it's trusted in ropes that have to work on ice‑encrusted decks in sub‑zero storms. Lab data shows strength gains of 5–10% as temperatures fall towards –50°C, with no loss in abrasion resistance.

To make The Indestructible T Shirt we work with Toyoshima, a Japanese textile company that's been in operation for over 180 years. Toyoshima blends the Dyneema® filaments with cotton during yarn production. That yarn is then knitted on circular jersey machines, with the knitting process tuned to accommodate Dyneema®'s low‑friction, high‑strength fibres. After knitting, the fabric is finished so the fabric has the softness and breathability you'd expect from cotton.

The Dyneema® in The Indestructible T Shirt is bio‑based, and produced from waste streams in the pulp and timber industries and certified under the ISCC sustainability standard. It delivers a 90% reduction in CO₂ footprint compared to conventional high‑strength polyethylene, with no compromise in mechanical performance.