About discharge prints

A primary consideration with new designs is which kind of inks to use. Nobody wants to wear a shirt that's heavy with multiple layers of rubbery ink, so our large prints are often created using water-based inks. This results in a soft print that still allows the fabric to breathe.

We've learned to avoid plastisol inks for large prints. I must congratulate the production manager at the factory, who brings so much knowledge and experience to the production process and gets so little credit! I don't even know his name, but he is greatly responsible for our outstanding product quality.

We've used a new printing technique (new to us at GMtee, that is!) on a couple of shirts. The technical name is discharge printing, but that seems such an unattractive term that we prefer to call it bleach printing.

The screen print is achieved not by adding ink to the fabric, but by discharging dye from the fabric to leave the colour of the natural cotton.

This is GMtee's new "Samurai and Serpent" T-shirt in long sleeves with a crew neck:




It's a spectacular image of samurai Saginoike Heikuro battling with a giant serpent, and I think it's one of our nicest shirts. I love wearing it. But perhaps the coolest thing about this shirt is that it has no ink on it.