This Plain Black T-Shirt Is Made From Wooden Waste, Dyed With It Too

Not just being gate-kept by the goth community, black is a universally flattering shade that makes people feel put-together, even if they’re just wearing a basic tee. It’s a running joke that the black T-shirt is the designer’s uniform, and its ubiquity makes it impossible to give up.

Unfortunately, most black pigments are derived from heavy crude oil and involve the burning of petroleum, making them potentially carcinogenic too, as per research from the World Health Organization.

Vollebak, a British clothing brand founded by twin brothers and former advertising creatives Nick and Steve Tidball, is on a mission to clean up the future of fashion by designing everyday wear that’s friendly on the earth (sometimes even on Saturn). Its T-shirts are, therefore, basics in the material sense. Previously, the label introduced an all-black, CO2-absorbing tee colored in algae ink, as well as a shirt made from long-lasting material used to wrap mummies.

The latest design returns to the root of Mother Earth, quite literally, to reinvent the classic black T-shirt without leaving a stain on the planet. Unlike its petroleum-based counterparts, the Wooden T Shirt is crafted from wood pulp and seaweed.

The everyday garment is made up of 75% Lyocell, drawn from pulped eucalyptus, and 19% SeaCell, derived from seaweed harvested from Icelandic fjords. A small amount of Roica V550 biodegradable fiber gives it a bit of a stretch.

On top of that, the tee is dyed with 100% wood waste. This bio-ink is developed by California-based Nature Coatings—which collects wood waste from the lumber, paper, and flooring sectors and converts it into “the cleanest black pigment ink on Earth.” Vollebak says it is the first to use this coloring to create a solid black shirt.

On the T-shirt, the wood ink will continue to lock in the carbon dioxide it used to absorb as a tree, and it will keep doing this for 100 years. The pigment doesn’t fade or turn bronze under sun exposure, making this wardrobe staple far more durable than the throwaway clothing sold by many fast-fashion retailers.

All of the wood waste began in sustainably managed FSC-certified forests, Vollebak assures, and production for the top gives off “negligible” amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

“While the Wooden T Shirt is highly technical to create, you wouldn’t know it just by putting it on,” notes Vollebak co-founder Nick Tidball. “It’s a soft, comfortable T-shirt with a great weight, that wears just like a regular T-shirt.”

“Finding new ways to create the color black is a sustainability priority for us because the conventional approach relies heavily on carbon black—a pigment derived from petroleum. Every black thing we own is likely to contain carbon black, from our phones to our cars to the ink in our pens,” Steve Tidball elaborates. “Our aim is to reinvent the way that black clothing is made.”

The Wooden T Shirt retails for US$125, and comes in sizes XS through XXL.

[via Vollebak, images courtesy]