Good Dads deserve a Mister Freedom® MEDALIST! ©2024
Mister Freedom® MEDALIST Crewneck Sweatshirt, made in Japan.
Limited “Freedom” Print Edition, hand-silkscreened in USA.
First, a bit of R&D background on the Mister Freedom® MEDALIST, our take on the iconic American SWEATSHIRT, introduced sometime in 2021.
Like classic vintage sweatshirts (~ pre-1970s), our MEDALIST is cut from tubular fleeced jersey, meaning the sock-like cylinder body has no side seams.
With roots in the 1920s, modern tubular fleece has been produced since the 1950s on elaborate single-jersey circular knitting machines. Due to the cylinder shape and fixed circumference of the finished material, several machines and tedious set-ups are required to produce different sizes of the same tubular sweatshirt fabric.
Our waistband ribbing is also tubular, without the joining side seam typical of contemporary fashion sweatshirts. We opted for a special “5×1 needle-out” type of ribbing, a cool feature of certain rare and desirable vintage 1940s-50s specimen. Our friends at Toyo Enterprise sourced-out not only the perfect tubular fleece in Japan, but managed to mill the special needle-out tubular ribbing.
Construction wise, we scrutinized and dissected several vintage specimen collected over the years, studied classic proportions and cuts, found inspiration in period silhouettes from old photos and 1930s-1960s catalogs of athletic goods, tested prototypes with traditional stitching options… and basically came up with a very old-school looking winner, the MF® MEDALIST!
For our aesthetics, one of the key point was the “drop shoulder” look. Modern sweatshirts and even contemporary vintage replicas tend to prefer an updated non-slouching shoulder seam, for a “more tailored” look. The drop shoulder cut may be an acquired taste, like the leg twist on a pair of old Levi’s for instance, but we went for the “anti-fit” cut of authentic 1940s-50s vintage sweatshirts.
The double neck “V” insert design detail was initially intended as a stretch gusset on the neck band so that the pull-over warm-up shirt (made of wool in the early days) would fit over, say, a football helmet. Our MEDALIST 40s-style double Vs are of the “functioning” type, as they actually are double-layer stretchy ribbing inserts, and not just the decorative V-shaped flat lock stitching typical of later productions of sweatshirts. Many “V”s on contemporary sweats are also purely decorative.
Another feature of our MEDALIST are the underarm expansion gussets, an intricate construction challenge lifted from a rare 1950s vintage sweat from our archives.
Anyone familiar with vintage sweats knows of the common sleeves-are-too-short issue, the result of excessive shrinkage and improper shrink tests from the maker. This is one of the liberties we took with “authenticity”, as we carefully balanced the drop of the shoulder seam, calculated optimal sleeve length while considering the extra-long (foldable) ribbed cuffs, factored-in fabric shrinkage, adjusted sleeve width… to achieve a proper post-wash fit that will work for most.
As a touch of modern practicability, we mounted a back pocket to the sweatshirt rear panel, with an original flat-lock construction “sandwiched” in the waistband, a handy storage for a smart phone when cycling.
Now the graphic part!
As we recently resumed ops at our in-house silkscreening station, hand-printing a few MF® Shop Tees with our popular “Freedom” logo, we threw in a few white MEDALISTS in the mix. We may be working on other graphics and body colors in the future, but this is a limited batch, and so far the only water-based print available on the MEDALIST. Water-based prints, as opposed to more modern and even plastisol-type ink prints, are characterized by their soft hand, due to the ink penetrating the yarns, instead of a thicker layer clinging to the surface of the fabric.
We operate our silkscreening press by hand, so no two shirts will come out exactly alike, the finished look depending on the pressure applied to the squeegee, number of passes, stretch of the cotton jersey on the table, position of the shirt, outside temperature, ink mix, viscosity, curing time, etc.
Our water-based prints will fade overtime with normal wash/wear routine, just as classic vintage printed Ts and sweats.
For another vintage-style ornamentation method on our MEDALIST, using a completely different traditional technique, see our Japan-printed flock graphics here.
Available from www.misterfreedom.com, our Los Angeles brick & mortar store, and fine retailers around the World.
Email [email protected] or call 323-653-2014 with any questions unanswered above.
Thank you for your support.
Christophe Loiron
Mister Freedom®
©2024
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