BJJ T-shirt, Line, white

BJJ t-shirt Line white, graffiti lettering. Three stacked blocks across the front. At the top, the athletes on the mat signature, with “on the mat” flipped beneath “athletes”, and the ATHOM emblem in its circle. In the middle, the words BRAZILIAN JIU JITSU KIMONO drawn with a broad marker, in round solid capitals stacked over five lines. At the bottom, three words in Japanese.

The lettering

It comes out of graffiti, from the era when people wrote on shutters with markers rather than spray cans. The letters do not line up: some lean, some sit upside down, and reading them takes a second of effort. That is deliberate. The flip is already in the brand’s logo, and here it carries across the whole block.

生きる 丸める 畳

Ikiru, marumeru, tatami. Live, roll up, tatami. The Japanese verb means to make round or to roll something up, not to roll in the sparring sense, which is randori. The pun works in English, where rolling became the verb of jiu-jitsu, and disappears in Japanese. We kept it anyway.

The white one, in practice

On white, the lettering turns a solid blue and the Japanese line a pale pink. This is the more readable of the two: blue on white gives the sharpest contrast, and the central block reads from across the room.

It is also the easier one to wear. A white tee goes with anything, does not trap heat in July, and slips into any outfit without imposing a colour on it. If you are buying one from the range, buy this one.

Care takes one line: 30 °C inside out, no fabric softener, line dried. Two things to avoid, bleach, which attacks the print before it whitens the cotton, and the tumble dryer, which shortens the garment.

One useful habit, true of every light coloured tee: give deodorant time to dry before pulling the shirt on. That is what keeps a collar clean over the years.

Cut and sizing

Straight cut, neither fitted nor oversized. The shoulder seam sits on the shoulder, the sleeve stops mid-bicep. Take your usual size for a clean drape, one up if you prefer a wider shoulder.

The cotton shrinks slightly on the first wash, mostly in length. Between two sizes, the larger is the safer call, especially if you are long in the body.