Tessuto e Grammatura

Fabric & Weight Method

Every figure on a product page comes from somewhere. This page is where it comes from: what we measure, on what, how many times, and what the number does not tell you.

Last updated 15 August 2026/Governed by Italian law

1. Why numbers, not adjectives

A heavyweight sweatshirt is a simple object and almost every difference that matters is settled before it is cut. Yet the words used to sell one are almost always adjectives: cosy, premium, substantial, soft. Those words are unfalsifiable, which is exactly why they get used.

Three measurements decide whether you keep reaching for a garment: what the cloth weighs, which side has been cut open, and how much it moves in the first wash. All three are on every product page on this site. A product missing any of them cannot be published here at all, and that is enforced by a check that runs before the site builds, not by good intentions.

2. Fabric weight

Weight is given in grams per square metre (g/m²), rounded to the nearest ten. It is measured on finished cloth, after dyeing and finishing, using a circular cutter of known area on samples taken from three separate points across the roll. We publish the mean.

We do not quote the mill’s specification. Greige cloth and finished cloth are not the same weight, and the gap between them is the oldest way to make a garment sound heavier than it is.

Rung	Thickness	Faces cut	What it is for
280 g/m²	1.6 mm	Loopback	Indoors with the air conditioning on, or under another layer in spring and autumn.
340 g/m²	2.1 mm	Loopback, Brushed fleece	The weight most people wear more days of the year than any other.
400 g/m²	2.6 mm	Loopback, Brushed fleece	Worn alone down to roughly five degrees above freezing.
480 g/m²	3.2 mm	Loopback	Outdoors in winter with nothing over it. Indoors you will get warm.
520 g/m²	3.7 mm	Loopback	Only for cold outdoors, worn alone. For ordinary days it is too much cloth.

Five folded squares of grey sweatshirt cloth stacked in a column against concrete, each visibly thicker than the one below, with a measurement bracket beside each — The five rungs photographed together at one distance under one light. Nothing here is scaled to flatter the heavier end.

Thickness in millimetres is measured on a folded edge under light pressure and is given as an aid to imagination, not as a specification. Weight is the specification.

3. Knit face

The inside of sweatshirt cloth is finished in one of two ways, and the two wear nothing alike. We never use a word that covers both.

Macro of a loopback knit, showing regular rows of unbroken yarn loops — Loopback. The loops are intact, exactly as they came off the machine.

Macro of a brushed fleece, showing a dense standing pile of cut fibre — Brushed. The loops have been cut open and combed up into a pile.

Loopback leaves the inside as unbroken loops. Nothing is cut, so there is less loose fibre to migrate and form pills, and the surface stays flat for years. Against the skin it reads cooler in the first moments, because there is no trapped air layer.
Brushed fleece passes the cloth under wire rollers that cut the loops and lift the fibre. That pile traps air, which you feel immediately as warmth. Over months of wear the pile lies down.

Neither is better. They wear differently. That sentence appears on every product page on this site, and it is the honest answer. Two rungs, 340 and 400, are cut in both faces from the same pattern so that the only variable between the two garments is the one you are trying to judge.

One piece of brushed fleece where the pile stands on the left half and has been pressed flat on the right half — Brushed pile after wear, on the right, against fresh pile on the left. This is expected behaviour and is not a fault. Every brushed product page says so.

4. Shrinkage

Cotton knit moves in the first wash. Anyone claiming otherwise is either pre-shrinking heavily, which changes the hand of the cloth, or not measuring.

We mark a one-metre square on finished cloth, run one full cycle at the temperature published on the product page, dry it the way the product page says, condition it flat for 24 hours, and measure again. Length and width are reported separately, because knit moves far more along one axis than the other. Three samples per fabric; we publish the mean, rounded to one decimal.

Fabric	Length	Width	Conditions
280 loopback	-3.0%	-1.5%	30 °C, line dried flat, measured after one full cycle
340 loopback	-3.5%	-2.0%	30 °C, line dried flat, measured after one full cycle
340 brushed	-4.0%	-2.5%	30 °C, line dried flat, measured after one full cycle
400 loopback	-3.5%	-2.0%	30 °C, line dried flat, measured after one full cycle
400 brushed	-4.5%	-2.5%	30 °C, line dried flat, measured after one full cycle
480 loopback	-4.0%	-2.5%	30 °C, line dried flat, measured after one full cycle
520 loopback	-4.5%	-3.0%	30 °C, line dried flat, measured after one full cycle

Note that brushed fabrics move more than loopback at the same weight, and that heavier cloth moves more than lighter cloth. Both are real and neither is flattering, which is why they are printed rather than averaged away into one number for the whole range.

Two identical knit panels laid side by side against steel rules, the right one measurably shorter after washing — The same panel before and after one cycle, squared against rules. The difference is small, and it is the difference between a garment that fits and one that does not.

5. The two size charts

Every product page carries two size charts. The first is the garment as delivered. The second is that same garment with the measured shrinkage applied along each axis: length figures reduced by the length percentage, girth figures by the width percentage.

Read the second one. It is the garment you will own from the first wash onward, for the rest of its life. Publishing only the first table is publishing the wrong table, and it is the single most common way a sweatshirt disappoints someone.

All measurements are taken flat, in centimetres, on the garment rather than on a body. Our fit model is 183 cm and the size worn is stated on every page.

6. Pilling

Pilling is tested to ISO 12945-2 on a Martindale machine at 2 000 rubs, and assessed against the standard photographic scale from 1, heavily pilled, to 5, unchanged.

Knit face	Grade	Method
Loopback	Grade 4 to 5	ISO 12945-2 Martindale, 2 000 rubs, assessed against the standard photographic scale
Brushed fleece	Grade 3 to 4	ISO 12945-2 Martindale, 2 000 rubs, assessed against the standard photographic scale

A grade is never published on this site without the method beside it. A pilling grade with no test method attached is a number with nothing behind it, and where we do not have the method we do not render the row.

Five swatches of the same knit in a row, the leftmost heavily covered in fibre balls and each one to the right progressively cleaner — The scale, photographed on our own cloth rather than reproduced from a standard. Grade 1 at the left, grade 5 at the right.

7. Tolerances

Cloth is manufactured, so it varies. These are the tolerances within which a delivered garment still matches what we published. Outside them, it does not conform and your rights under the legal guarantee apply.

Figure	Tolerance
Fabric weight	± 5%
Garment measurements	± 1.5 cm on girth, ± 1.0 cm on length
Shrinkage	± 1.0 percentage point
Pilling	Half a grade

8. Origin

Every product page carries two origin lines, because a garment has two origins and conflating them is how the word “made” gets stretched:

Where the fabric was knitted, which is where the yarn became cloth.
Where the garment was cut and sewn, which is where the cloth became a sweatshirt.

Both are mandatory. A product cannot be listed with one and not the other. We make no claim of origin beyond these two statements, and we use no flag, map, place name or colour arrangement anywhere on this site or on any garment to imply one.

9. Cords and safety

Where a garment has a cord, its type is stated on the product page. We build them in three ways, all of which are designed so the cord cannot be drawn out of its channel:

Type	How it is built
Cord with metal stoppers	The hood cord runs through two metal stoppers that are crimped onto the cord ends, so it cannot be pulled out of the channel in a wash.
Cord with closed ends	Both ends of the waist cord are bar-tacked closed against the eyelet, so the cord cannot be drawn out of the channel.
Internal cord, no free ends	The waist cord sits fully inside the channel and is stitched down at the centre back. Nothing hangs loose outside the garment.

Three lengths of flat cotton drawcord laid in a row, one with metal stoppers, one with stitched-shut ends, one disappearing into a fabric channel — The three constructions. Nothing in this catalogue has a free-running cord with open ends.

We do not cut sizes for children under 14. EN 14682 prohibits cords at the neck and hood of children’s garments, and restricts them elsewhere. Rather than build a childrenswear line to that standard, we simply do not make one. If that ever changes, the standard will be met in full before anything is offered, and this page will say so.

10. What makes a set a set

A set is sold as one product only where the top and the bottom match on all three of the following:

The same fabric weight
The same knit face
The same colour, from the same dye lot

If any one of the three does not match, it is not sold here as a set and it is not named as one. Two greys from different dye lots are two different greys, and you will see it the first time you wear them together in daylight.

Two swatches of grey knit laid edge to edge, so alike in colour and structure that the join between them is almost invisible — Two halves of a set, butted together. The join is where a mismatch would show.

For the same reason, the pairing suggestions on a product page only ever show bottoms at the same weight and the same face. We will not cross-sell you a 340 top with a 480 leg.

11. Care

Care instructions on this site are short because most of what extends the life of a heavyweight knit is short: wash it cold, wash it less often than you think, and do not tumble it.

Wash at the temperature printed on the product page, inside out.
Do not tumble dry. Heat is what drives the second and third round of shrinkage, long after the first wash you were expecting.
On brushed fleece specifically: tumble drying accelerates the flattening of the pile. This warning is printed on every brushed product page, not hidden here.
Warm iron on the outside face only. Pressing the rib flat destroys its recovery, and it does not come back.

12. Where this can be wrong

A method page that only lists strengths is marketing. These are the real limits of what is published here:

Three samples is three samples. Our figures are means from a small number of measurements per fabric, not from continuous production monitoring. A roll can fall outside them.
Your machine is not our machine. Shrinkage is measured under one set of conditions. A hotter wash, a longer spin or a tumble dryer will move a garment further than the published figure, and that is not a defect in the cloth.
Pilling is tested, not lived. Two thousand rubs on a Martindale is a comparison between fabrics. It is not a prediction of what a rucksack strap will do over one winter.
Thickness in millimetres is soft data. It depends on how hard you press. Weight does not, which is why weight is the number the shop is organised around.
Screens vary. Our greys are photographed under one consistent light. We cannot control how yours renders them.

If a garment you receive does not match what this page says it should, that is a conformity issue and we will fix it. Write to support@scmodaitalia.shop and see the legal guarantee.

Contatti: support@scmodaitalia.shop·+39 335 847 1906