Worth the Hype? Merz B. Schwanen
A Quick Look At Their Famous 215 T-shirt
[Feel free to skip this section if you’re stingy]
Hello fellas and welcome back to another riveting entry in the Frayed Collar newsletter. As you may know, I’ve run into a bit of success with this newsletter in the last couple of months, and am working on rolling out some paid content (This letter will be free — the accompanying letter on loopwheeling as a manufacturing process will be paid.).
To keep it a buck with you all, Maddy and I are planning on becoming parents over the next year or so, and are also looking into the (increasingly out-of-reach) idea of buying a house here in Massachusetts. As you might guess, both of those things are insanely expensive and that means no money for my silly little hobbies…
Unless, those hobbies could somehow fund themselves through the generous patronage of my readers here. In other words, if you appreciate my content, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It makes a massive difference in my ability to keep creating for you guys.
Also if you’re an accountant, please help a brother out — I’ve heard that you can write off “influencer purchases“ as business expenses, but I would also like to not go to jail for tax fraud.
Okay, grift session over. Please enjoy the following on the most expensive t-shirts I’ve ever purchased:
As a testament to my commitment of re-investing my newsletter funds back into making better content for you, I have gone out and purchased two $90 t-shirts from one of the internet’s favorite brands, Merz B. Schwanen.
“But Kevin, The Bear has been out for years now, Merz is already old news!“
Yeah well I haven’t seen it yet so it doesn’t count.
Still, we should start at the beginning and talk about the ass-backwards way I managed to get influenced into parting with my cold, hard cash for this purchase.
I’m not a huge YouTube guy, but I do really love the videos that the Iron Snail’s YouTube channel. He puts out some top-tier menswear content and really dives deep into what makes the brands he discusses special.
To cope with the bleak, multiple-days-in-a-row-where-the-temperature-doesn’t-crack-20ºF New England winter, I was watching his video ranking the best sweatshirts, hoping to channel some cozy vibes:
[Also an aside, is Michael the iron snail, or is this some mysterious third party that the viewer is not privy to? I’ll be honest I’m not up to date on my snail lore.]
The video is great and I highly recommend the watch. The Snail reviews a wide spectrum of price ranges in the video, and crafts his own ratings system to take into account a variety of factors to help you choose the best sweatshirt for you. This is like aspirational-tier content creation in my opinion. Unfortunately, I’m way too uncomfortable in front of a camera to ever give YouTube a real shot. Maybe next life!
That said, the video itself does not include a review of Merz B Schwanen’s knitwear, there is a comment lamenting their exclusion from the list in the comments section:
This sort of jogged my memory with regards to the brand itself, so I visited their storefront to poke around, not looking for anything in particular.
Until now, I had written it off as hype brought on by (what I assumed was) a mid TV show with a really effective viral marketing campaign, but people genuinely seem to love their offerings. After remembering that I have a newsletter that I’m supposed to be making content for, I took the plunge on their flagship product, the 215 t-shirt. This is the same one that Jeremy Allen White wears in The Bear.
The Merz B. Schwanen 215 Tee
Though the company was originally established as a textile factory in 1911 by Balthazar Merz, its modern rendition was founded by Gitta and Peter Plotnicki, both fashion designers, after finding one of the original manufacturer’s henleys at a flea market in Berlin.
Surprised by the interesting properties of the henley such as triangular inserts under the arms, an intricate label, and no side-seams, the pair knew they had stumbled upon something special.
Their intrigue ran so deep that they got in contact with one of the few textile manufacturers capable of producing loopwheeled cotton left in Germany, one Rudolf Loder. Together the three got to work, modernizing this incredibly old-school way of making textiles, and on the 100th anniversary of the brand’s first founding, they launched their revival.
Merz B. Schwanen positions itself as a high-end basics brand that leverages old tech from when garments were built to be bomb-proof. To top it off, their garments are entirely produced in Europe, with their flagship items produced locally in the Swabian Alps of Germany.
The short film they have pinned in their IG really perfectly encapsulates the brand’s ethos:
The Buying Process
These things are surprisingly hard to come by.
These things are also surprisingly hard to size.
Honestly it’s crazy that there’s so much hype for such an expensive basic garment. I don’t have industry-insider access, but it really makes me wonder how much male consumption of high-end clothing has increased in the age of social media. Would be a fascinating piece I think.
Anywho, the 215 t-shirt is listed at 85€ on Merz’s website, which comes out to $89.27. The 215 was completely sold out on their website in every color and every size. After looking around on the internet, it seems that they are basically sold out in perpetuity, due to the small-batch nature of loopwheel production.
I did manage to find a trusty retailer however, and ended up purchasing my tees via Son of a Stag, a London-based company that’s great for sourcing nicer European brands if you’re an American (if you like Paraboot, I’d recommend buying from them). They also give out a 10% welcome discount which you can apply to these tees, which is exactly what I did. After applying the discount, the price came down to $78 per tee. Still hella expensive, but much more palatable than $90.
So now that we’ve found a place that actually had these tees in stock (and we’re getting a sick deal on them too), it’s time to figure out how to size these bastards (the worst part of this whole ordeal).
My measurements for reference:
For t-shirts, I generally wear between an L and XL. After looking over their (thankfully accurate) sizing chart, I saw that I would be pushing the limits of an XXL, their largest size, and kind of left scratching my head.
After browsing reddit for like an hour trying to get to the bottom of this, I finally found this incredibly detailed article from Withered Fig that assuaged my hesitations a bit, and decided to bite the bullet on the XXL.
Packaging
First, a shoutout to Son of a Stag for putting in some effort to their own packaging. Most retailers skip stuff like this, but presentation makes a big difference.
Now for Merz itself:
I was REALLY impressed with the packaging for the shirts themselves. Again, it’s the little things that make such a difference.
Unboxing the Merz shirts is an experience in itself and makes the entire thing feel so much more premium.
The black shirt picked up a little bit of cardboard dandruff on it, and somehow had one of my dog’s hairs on the shirt before I even opened the box, but otherwise much the same.
The Fit
They state everywhere that these shirts are very long out of the box, and they’re not kidding. I found that they look great with a bit of a slouchy tuck.
My arms are almost exactly 16” in circumference, and there’s about a millimeter of slack when flexed.
This is the “natural“ color and not a pure white, but the fabric is substantial enough that it’s not really see-through. When wearing the shirt untucked, I could see the dark indigo of my jeans through the shirt, but that’s expected.
I haven’t gotten around to washing these yet, as they have some pretty rigorous standards, but I am expecting quite a bit of shrinkage, given that they’re not pre-washed.
Overall Opinion
Erm yeah I’m thinking the 215 tees are worth the hype.
The fabric is thick and luxurious, and the fit works well for me. $90 is a high price point, but for a made-in-Germany of this high quality, I honestly think it’s still pretty reasonable (this feels insane to type out).
The only real friction is figuring out their strange sizing stuff other than that, it’s totally worth a purchase.
Overall rating: 4.5/5
Importantly, and sorry to be a bit blunt, but if you’re fat, I would skip out on these. I’m wearing the largest size they offer, their XXL, and I don’t have much room to spare here.
I also grabbed one of their signature swan caps too. The pink-on-charcoal was too good to pass up. Unfortunately, it came with a defect, and the swan is completely off-center 😭 The panel seam itself seems to curve off to the left.
I’m kind of making my peace with it and pretending that it adds a little sprezzatura though. It’s a nice hat otherwise!
Minutiae
PEPPER DOG just celebrated her 4th birthday. Please comment “P“ to pet.
P
You can generally write off the item if it generates income. If your review of this shirt can reasonably be linked to income from your substack, affiliate links, etc. you’re fairly safe. The “reasonable” part is where things get iffy, I think as long as you don’t try to get cute with the IRS you’ll be alright.