I recently lost some weight and because of that my preferred and standard merino t-shirts started to wear larger than I wanted. Which means I needed to get some new shirts, but instead of simply changing out what I have with a new size, I went looking for something entirely different and found the The Wool Raglan T-Shirt from Minus33.

I’ve been wearing it for a while now and am a big fan. Let me tell you what makes this great.

Material

Minus33 labels this material as ‘micro weight’ in their ‘Woolverino’ collection. The weight references the fact that this is a 145gsm jersey knit fabric, and it is thin stuff — not the thinnest out there but it’s lighter than your standard cotton t-shirt.

The Woolverino fabric is made up of 84% Merino Wool, 12% Nylon, 4% Spandex. This is a great blend, giving enough nylon for structure, spandex for stretch, and everything else merino wool for performance. Add to that, the merino chosen is 17.5 micron — it’s soft stuff.

I’ve found this to be a surprisingly stretchy shirt that has an excellent hand feel and softness to it.

Fit & Style

This is a raglan sleeve, so it’s going to look more athletic than it does ‘normal’ out of the box, and on top of that, this is a rather slim/athletic cut. I don’t find that it overly clings to my body (like the images on the website show) but it certainly is a more tailored form fitting cut.

This cut works well for me, and I find it extremely comfortable and something which is easily worn under a layer, or as a stand alone t-shirt. It’s a nice shirt that sits on the edge of workout, to casual. Good stuff.

The material is thin, and in the grey color I got, you can see some skin tone through it in areas where the material is being pulled a little tighter. For most there should be no issues with transparency, but there is a potential for it — I would suspect the darker colors to reduce this issue.

Performance

Minus33 lists the performance attributes as follows:

• Durable: I have no good way to test this in such a short time frame, but I’ve seen no pilling or other issues at all with it.
• Temperature regulating: par for the course with merino, and is not held back at all with the nylon and spandex added to the knit.
• UV Protection: this is listed, but it’s rated at UPF 20 which is better than nothing, but hardly earth shattering. Not entirely sure why they wanted to tout this one.

The performance on this shirt is on part with any 80%+ merino shirt, which is great to begin with — the added stretch is a nice bonus allowing the shirt to wear comfortably more trim.

Overall

I really like this shirt, it feels very nice, very soft, and is very comfortable. For those who want something looser fitting, you’ll want to look elsewhere. But if you want something really soft and comfortable, and a little more trim than most offerings — this is my favorite to date.

You get all of this for $65, and generally at that price you are not going to get something cut this well, or with this fine a micron wool. This is a stellar value on an already good shirt.

Recommended.

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