Earlier this week, redditor ggnavedd asked the men of r/MaleFashionAdvice about what they thought the most comfortable hoodie was. He explained that while he knows merino wool hoodies with low micron counts are supposedly most comfortable (the lower the micron count, the finer the fiber), it’s not that noticeable to him after a certain point.
“Outlier and Arcteryx Veilance makes some low micron merino garments but their hoodies don’t stand out in terms of comfort compared to a casual Champions hoodie personally (using this as a reference point since they have invented and popularized this garment),” he wrote. “There’s also a $6,000 Loro Piana double cashmere hoodie I tried on for a few minutes at a store, but again, nothing stands out except for the astonishing price.” Along those lines, he’d even borrowed Yeezy Season and GAP x Yeezy hoodies previously, but “they just marginally beat a traditional cotton Champions hoodie.”
The thing is, as Leftieswillrule quickly pointed out, the most comfortable hoodie isn’t something you can buy, it’s something you have to suffer for. “Buy a hoodie (any hoodie that fits), wear it five times a week for as long as it takes for you to go through a personal hardship (e.g., breakup, death of a loved one),” he replied to ggnavedd’s original post. “That’s now the most comfortable hoodie in the world (to you).”
Sure, you could spend $800 on Margiela’s “weathered hoodie,” which is probably really soft and comfortable, but there’s nothing truly “weathered” about it — at least emotionally speaking. “My grey reverse weave got me through an industrial design masters, and I almost had a panic attack when I almost caught it on fire grinding a weld a couple weeks ago,” jekyll919 added to the thread. “Luckily, the scorch mark washed out somehow.”
For Andynym, a veteran, the most comfortable sweater is the one that got him “through a lot of cold Humvee nights,” he explained. “I got out, and I wore it to every test I took for the first two years of engineering school. It kept me safe and warm for so long.” In fact, he didn’t even know how much he loved his Gen III Air Force fleece until he gave it to a friend who didn’t have much money and was working long hours outdoors in Colorado. “I cried all the way home in my car — it took me completely by surprise how much it hurt to say goodbye to that jacket,” Andynym admitted.
But perhaps there’s another way, too. There’s obviously no equivalency for suffering, yet the right kind of customization can imbue a hoodie with similar feels and comfort that have nothing to do with low micron counts. Or as Geodevils42 explained, “My fiance got me a sweet volcom sweater and stitched in a little heart on the inside of the cuff for Christmas that year. Best believe I wore that til it crumbled.”
Andrew Fiouzi
Andrew Fiouzi is a staff writer at MEL.
