Wear This Shirt For 100 Days Without Washing It Once

Image via Wool & Prince

A dude wearing the same shirt for 100 days? Thanks, but I’ll pass. Guys tend to get smelly, and that shirt would have to stink like a high-school locker room, right? Not according to fashion startup Wool & Prince. The New York company claims it has developed the perfect shirt for men who hate doing the laundry. Amazingly, the button-down Oxfords aren’t composed of some super space-aged material, either. The shirts are made of fine wool.

Wool? Like clothes your grandpa wore that were hot and itched like hell? Not in the least. Wool & Prince spent months developing its trade-marked Cotton-Soft wool using the finest wool shirting yarn available, typically only found in the luxury fashion industry.

Not only are Wool & Prince shirts light and airy, but they’re durable. Wool lasts six times longer than cotton, and its natural crimp makes it extremely resistant to wrinkles. Still, a shirt worn more than a day or two is going to smell, right? Apparently not. Wool is more efficient than cotton and other materials in absorbing sweat and allowing it to evaporate into the air. And sweat itself has no odor. The stench comes from bacteria that feed on it. So if the sweat evaporates, there’s no BO. Granted, Wool & Prince doesn’t advise skipping showers, because then the BO will be from you, not the shirt.

Wool & Prince founder Mac Bishop put his reputation on the line by wearing a Wool & Prince shirt for 100 days straight in a social experiment. A company-made video depicts him walking around the streets of New York asking pedestrians what they think of his shirt. And you know what? It still looked clean and wrinkle-free. Of course smelleo hasn’t been invented yet, so we can’t comment on that aspect, but none of the interviewees in the video were grimacing or holding their noses.

And just in case you think Bishop may have cheated, he wasn’t the only dude to test the shirt for 100 days. The company actually commissioned 15 researchers to take the 100-day challenge, wearing the shirts for activities such as backpacking, biking and dancing. The researchers were pleased with the fabric, but asked for shirts with slimmer fits, different patterns and softer materials. And Wool & Prince obliged.

I crumpled the shirt into a ball and put it in the bottom of my backpack when I am running around the city just to see if I can ruin it. No luck–it comes out ready to wear every time,” shirt researcher Aaron Flack said.

To finance its first production order of at least 300 shirts, Wool & Prince turned to Kickstarter. The company set an original goal of $30,000 in pledges by May 22. But with 21 days to go in the campaign, it has far exceeded its original target, with more than $167,000 in pledges. Obviously backers are impressed with the product and want to see it launch to market. But based on the pledges being made, it looks like most backers really want to get their hands on one of those shirts. Of the 1,161 backers thus far, only 116 have pledged a dollar amount—anything less than $98—that does not offer a shirt as a gift. In fact, 678 backers have already pledged enough to receive one Wool & Prince shirt in their choice of color. Another 281 backers will be receiving two shirts in exchange for their $190 pledge, and 93 people will receive three shirts for a pledge of $280 or more.

Wool & Prince is offering three sweet lamb roasts for 10 to anyone who wants to pledge $5,000 to the campaign, but so far there haven’t been any takers. Bishop and company will treat 10 dudes to a lamb roast on an Oregon farm about 30 minutes outside of Portland. Not too shabby, but of course for $5,000 you could also get a shitload of Wool & Prince shirts. Hell, you’d never have to do laundry again.