The flannel shirt
70€ for a shirt isn't exactly cheap. But if you take a closer look, you'll see that it has features you rarely find all in one place:
- Truly made in Europe: the shirt is made in Portugal, as is the fabric, while most brands have both manufactured in countries where wages are too low to live with dignity.
- Use of organic cotton: This is the only way to avoid contributing to the mass extinction of biodiversity and to avoid putting farmers at risk. This commitment comes at a price: organic cotton costs 50% more than conventional cotton.
- Quality: In addition to what you can read on this page, all our clothing is pre-washed so it won’t shrink when you wash it at home, guaranteed to be free of substances toxic to your health, and covered in the event of a defect… And this commitment also comes at a cost.
In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a shirt like this at that price. If we’re able to sell it at that price, it’s because we cut costs on a lot of things we consider unnecessary: we don’t run ads, we don’t do sales, we don’t have collections… and we don’t have greedy shareholders demanding ever-higher profits.
Learn more.
Released in April 2016
Released in August 2019
- New GOTS-certified organic cotton fabric.
- The fabric is brushed and then sheared to reduce pilling.
- New, more fitted cut.
- Larger resin buttons, making them easier to thread through the buttonhole.
- Buttons secured with Ascolite to prevent them from coming undone.
- Removal of the reinforcement swallows (once we realized that they provide... no reinforcement at all).
- Removal of the ease pleat at the back and the second button on the sleeves.
We shared the story behind the improvements to our shirts in this article
Coming out in November 2023
- To achieve colors rich in nuance, the yarns are now "multi-colored" (i.e., two strands of different shades in a single yarn) instead of using one color for the warp and another for the weft. This helps make signs of wear less noticeable.
- Remove the pocket for a cleaner look
- Thinner heat-seal tape on the collar and cuffs to slow down wear caused by friction
We use organic cotton because so-called “conventional” cotton is a disaster for insects, birds, and farmers. Read more in this article.
Brushed fabric—soft and warm.
Semi-fitted cut: It follows the contours of the bust without being tight.
This shirt is made in Portugal at the Supercorte factory, with which we have been working since 2017.
Worn, tested, and approved by thousands of customers, this shirt is the result of several years of continuous improvement. We have refined it over time to achieve a balance of quality, ethics, and price that we now consider optimal.
For example, we could choose wool to make it warmer, but it would be more delicate and more expensive.
Techniques That Ensure Quality
Shaved flannel
After being brushed, the fabric is sheared: this helps maintain its softness while minimizing pilling over time. Click here to see what the fabric looks like after about ten washes—this example shows a sand-colored flannel, a color on which pilling is most visible.
Shaved flannel
Thick buttons
Ascolite® Fastener
Pre-wash
Thick buttons
We chose thick resin buttons that won't break in the washing machine, unlike those made of wood or mother-of-pearl.
Just in case, a spare button is sewn onto the care label.
Shaved flannel
Thick buttons
Ascolite® Fastener
Pre-wash
Ascolite® Fastener
To ensure that the buttons don't come undone, we've reinforced their attachment using Ascolite technology, a process that involves wrapping the base of the button with a heat-sealed thread.
Shaved flannel
Thick buttons
Ascolite® Fastener
Pre-wash
Pre-wash
This shirt has been stabilized and pre-washed at the factory to prevent it from shrinking when you wash it at home (with cotton clothing, most of the shrinkage occurs during the first wash).
Shaved flannel
Thick buttons
Ascolite® Fastener
Pre-wash
Soft and warm
The process for making flannel: pass a cotton fabric between two rollers with protrusions that “scratch” the fabric. This results in a shirt that’s soft to the touch—because it’s slightly fuzzy—and warm, because air is trapped in the fabric’s nap.
In detail
Deep shade
If you look through a magnifying glass, you'll see that the color is “mottled,” meaning it's created by interweaving threads of two slightly different colors.
American collar
Also known as a “button-down,” the collar points are fastened with buttons (which keeps them from flipping up).
Rounded cuffs
The sleeve cuffs have a curved cut: this means they wear out less over time and with repeated washings.
Horizontal buttonhole
On the bottom button, the buttonhole is horizontal, to allow more room around the waist.
How to Wear It
A few ideas if you're stuck
Composition
100% cotton
Origin and Certifications
- Garment manufacturing, weaving, dyeing, and spinning: Portugal
- Cotton: Turkey
...manufacture in Portugal instead of France? Of course, manufacturing in Portugal allows us to sell at lower prices. But it’s also easier to produce high-quality items there: in the 1980s, when France outsourced its manufacturing, Portugal strengthened its own. That said, other companies besides ours manage to make flannel shirts that are “Made in France,” such as Les Tricots Marcel, Le Laboureur, and Rue Begand.
... does cotton come from so far away? In reality, it doesn’t get much closer than that. While a few die-hard Gauls manage to grow it in their fields, cotton cultivation is marginal in Europe. The closest places to source it are Egypt, Turkey, and Greece.
How This Product Will Age
How do we know this? We ask our customers for their feedback on the product one year after purchase. And if the product is less than a year old, we provide our predictions based on some unsolicited feedback and our experience with similar products.
This flannel shirt will remain in very good condition.
As with all flannel shirts, slight pilling will occur with washing. It will be more noticeable on light colors, since the shadow cast by the pills is more visible there. In any case, these pills can be removed with a lint shaver.
On dark-colored shirts, as is always the case with cotton fabrics, the color will fade with repeated washings and lighten in some areas, particularly around the collar.
Care Instructions
The most important thing is to wash it inside out, with the collar unbuttoned and laid flat—to minimize fading and pilling.
It’s machine-washable at 40 degrees and can be tumble-dried. But it’s better to wash it at 30°C and air-dry it: it’s just as effective, much more eco-friendly, and will extend its lifespan.
Our best tip to prevent it from getting too wrinkled and to make ironing easier: spin-dry on low speed (600 rpm max) and hang it on a hanger while it’s still damp.
Don’t forget to always iron your shirts inside out and at a low temperature to minimize damage—especially with flannel shirts, whose fluffy fibers don’t handle a hot iron well. And if you don’t know how to iron, just follow this video tutorial.
The fabric will always pill a little. In fact, that’s the very nature of flannel: the cotton is brushed (which is what makes it so soft), so the fibers come loose more easily (here’swhat the shirt looks like after six months of wear and about ten wash/iron cycles on the reverse side). You can learn to live with it… or run a lint shaver over it every now and then.
Environmental Cost
This environmental cost is calculated using the official methodology of the French environmental labeling system (to be rolled out starting October 1, 2025).
The label above shows the product’s environmental cost according to the official French environmental labeling methodology. This represents what its production “costs” nature when considering its impact on climate change, ocean acidification, its toxicity to freshwater, and so on. Currently in use in the textile sector, this label should soon appear on many everyday consumer products (food, cosmetics, furniture, etc.) to help you make more eco-friendly purchasing decisions.
The flannel shirt therefore has an environmental cost of 516 impact points*.
By comparison, a garment of equivalent weight—made of 100% conventional cotton, manufactured in Bangladesh, and sold by a fast-fashion brand—has an environmental cost of 2,153 points*.
Why is there this difference? Here are the main reasons:
- Countries of origin: Manufacturing in Portugal or France requires less fossil fuel energy than in Bangladesh (one of the leading producers of low-cost clothing). As a result, this more local manufacturing reduces the impacts on climate change, ocean acidification, and resource depletion.
- The material: Organic cotton has a relatively low environmental impact compared to conventional cotton, particularly because it uses few pesticides (and thus poses a low risk of toxicity to freshwater) and is biodegradable (and thus causes fewer issues related to microfibers or end-of-life waste).
- Sustainability: Fast-fashion retailers encourage purchasing—in particular by rapidly refreshing their collections and offering a vast number of styles—and they discourage repairs by charging rock-bottom prices. This, in turn, increases the number of garments sold per person and reduces the number of times a garment is worn. In contrast, at Loom, we’ve chosen to adopt business practices that encourage our customers to keep their clothes for as long as possible.
Even though we've done everything we can to minimize it, this product's environmental impact is not insignificant. So before you buy, make sure to get the most use out of your clothes.
*Calculations performed by Loom on August 24, 2026. Click on the links to access the simulations from the official Ecobalyse tool and get more details on the assumptions used. Please note: The number of points is not always exactly the same on Ecobalyse (whose methodology changes regularly) as on the official environmental label (based on Ecobalyse version 7.0).
Reviews of this product
The standard practice is to send review request emails a few days after the purchase. We wait a month—the minimum amount of time needed to form an informed opinion.
Customer Review Policy
When do you ask customers for reviews?
We’ll send you a review request one month after we receive your order. We believe this is the minimum amount of time needed to have worn and washed an item several times and to form a truly informed opinion. After that, all your reviews are published within a week, whether they’re positive or negative.
Do you request reviews for 100% of the products ordered by customers?
We used to do that at first, but then we realized we were starting to send way too many emails to certain customers who shop with us regularly. In short, we were spamming them a bit. Plus, it was starting to take the team way too much time to respond to reviews—since we want to reply individually and privately to almost everyone who leaves us a review. Today, we no longer ask for reviews on products that meet the following two criteria: 1/ There are enough reviews posted on the site for potential buyers to form an informed opinion about the product. 2/ We on the Loom team have read enough reviews to understand how to evolve the product into the next generation.
Just a quick thought: What proof is there that we aren't manipulating reviews by giving 5-star ratings to everything?
Honestly: nothing—we’re just giving you our word. Just like with everything else, actually: where we manufacture our products, where our wool comes from, our lab test results, and so on. The only times we might edit what you write is if your message contains spelling mistakes (and even then, quite a few slip past us) or if it’s racist, homophobic, etc. (but that’s never happened so far).
Asking for feedback after just one month isn't enough to know if the clothes are really durable, is it?
You're right—that's why we send you another email asking for a review one year after your purchase—we even ask for a photo to see how your garment has aged. We use the responses to improve our clothing and to provide information on “how this product will age” on our product pages. To avoid unnecessarily bothering our customers, we don’t ask for reviews on 100% of the products ordered: as soon as we have enough data to understand where we can improve, we stop asking for reviews after one year.