Plain T-shirt prices gave up on logic a while back, and nobody seems keen to explain them. Thirty euro in one shop window, three hundred in the next, and under the same ceiling lights the cotton in both looks pretty much identical. Tees in the Italian catalog at Felpa Essentials sit between €60 and €79, which drops them in the awkward middle — too dear to grab five on a whim, too cheap to assume the money obviously went somewhere.
What the €60 to €79 band actually covers
Thirty-four tees are listed at the moment. The lowest is €60, the highest €79, and the struck-through numbers above them run from €150 to €190. Treat any crossed-out price on a clothing site with a shrug, honestly. What you can judge is the shirt once it is on your back, so the comparison that matters isn’t €65 against €190. It’s €65 against the €12 multipack shirt that goes shapeless by March.
Most of the cost in a plain tee hides in places that photograph badly — the cloth, the cut through the body, the collar. Which is why arguments about T-shirt prices online never settle anything.
| Category | Items listed | Price now |
| T-shirts | 34 | €60–79 |
| Hoodies | 59 | €80–98 |
| Shorts | 16 | €50–55 |
Laid out like that, the tees land just under the hoodies and a little above the shorts, roughly where a single-layer garment belongs.
Eighty percent cotton, twenty percent polyester
That blend is printed on the labels across the range, and it’s a compromise with a point to it. The cotton is there for hand feel and for letting some air through, while the polyester quietly does the structural work — keeping the hem from twisting after a summer of washes, and drying a good deal faster on a rack in a Milan flat where a tumble dryer was never going to fit.
A 100% cotton shirt does feel nicer in the shop, no argument there. It also grows a bit through the body and pulls up in the length, and twenty washes later the shoulder line has wandered off somewhere. A fifth of polyester slows all that down. Hardly glamorous. Pretty useful, though, if you’d like the shirt to still read as a shirt next June.
The collar is where cheap shirts give themselves away
Pull the neckband gently and let it go. A well-built shirt snaps it back flat, whereas a weak one holds a few millimeters of stretch, and that bit of slack is what becomes a wavy ripple somewhere around the third wash — which is, basically, the one thing that makes a tee look tired while the cotton itself is still perfectly fine.
So, on a shirt in this price bracket, what you want to find is:
- a neckband that sits down on the chest instead of lifting away from it
- tape or stitching across the back of the neck, holding the two shoulder seams steady
- a hem that hangs level, with neither side dipping
- no twist through the body after a cold wash and a day on the line
Two minutes of poking at a shirt like that will tell you more than any product description does. And you can run the same test on a tee you already own, which is a cheaper way of working out what you actually like.
Plain, printed, V-neck, 1977 — the price barely moves
The range breaks into plain shirts, printed-logo shirts, V-necks and the 1977 pieces, and all four land inside the same €60–79 window. That surprised me a little. On most catalogs a front print adds ten or fifteen euro to the ticket. Here it doesn’t, so a printed shirt is arguably the stronger buy on paper — provided you wash it inside out and keep it away from a hot dryer, because the print is always the part that ages first.
If you want to compare the whole list rather than one photo, the magliette essentials page puts the colors and the cuts next to each other, and it pays to scroll the lot, since the plain shirts and the printed ones aren’t grouped separately.
Color decides how often you’ll really wear it
Dark gray, matte black, sage, beige, white, blue, brown, coral and a dark gray mélange. That’s the palette, and cost per wear hangs on this choice more than on the price itself.
A white tee at €65 gets worn hard until the first coffee lands on it. Dark gray and black just keep going, through winter layers and through August. Beige and sage look good in spring and a bit washed out under January light. Coral is a holiday shirt — lovely in Puglia in August, strange in a Rome office in February. Buying only one at this price? I’d take the dark gray mélange.
What the €65 doesn’t include
Standard delivery runs €15 and takes eight to twelve business days, so a lone tee is really an €80 purchase unless the order is bigger; shipping stops costing anything past €500. Returns come back as an exchange or store credit inside thirty days, for a wrong or faulty item, rather than as money in your account — so order the size you intend to keep.
That’s the honest catch with any mid-priced shirt bought online — the garment can be sound value and the total can still feel steep, because that delivery line couldn’t care less whether one item went in the box or four.
| Pro Tip: Weigh up the order, not the shirt. Two tees and a hoodie carry exactly the same €15 standard delivery as a single tee, so the real per-item cost falls hard on the second and third piece. If a second shirt was coming in three months anyway, buy it now and let one shipping charge cover both. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is €65 a lot to pay for a T-shirt?
It’s squarely mid-market. Supermarket multipacks work out under €10 a shirt and designer cotton climbs past €200. In the €60–79 band you’re paying for a denser cloth and a collar that recovers, not for a name across the chest.
Do these tees come up big?
They do — the cut is relaxed and unisex right across the range, and the shop’s own FAQ warns that Essentials sizing comes out larger than standard. Order the size below your usual if a loose drape isn’t the look you want, and read the cm chart first.
Does a printed logo cost extra here?
No, which isn’t how most catalogs price a graphic. Plain and printed shirts share the same €60–79 range, so the print is effectively thrown in.
Mid-priced tees are the hardest garment to judge from a screen, because the parts that justify the money — the weight of the cloth, the snap of the collar, the way the hem sits after a wash — are exactly the parts a photo can’t carry. Buy one, wash it twice, wear it for a couple of weeks. If it still looks like it did on day one, the €65 did its job, and the second shirt becomes a much simpler decision.
Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional fashion, consumer, or purchasing advice. Prices, product availability, fabric blends, sizing, shipping costs, return policies, and catalogue details mentioned are based on the retailer’s stated information at the time of writing and may change without notice. Struck-through prices should be treated cautiously and are not a reliable measure of value. Readers should verify all product specifications, size charts, delivery charges, and return/exchange terms directly with the retailer before purchasing, and consider total order cost rather than per-item price alone. Any mention of specific brands or retailers (including Felpa Essentials) does not imply endorsement. The author and publisher disclaim any liability for decisions made based on this content.
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