Navy Virgin Wool Oversized Top - Half Placket Dropped Shoulder for OEM

An oversized navy top from LABO.ART cut somewhere between a knit and a shirt, with dropped shoulders, long loose sleeves, a classic collar and a half button placket, listed at 292 GBP with three of four sizes in stock and the 0 sold out. It publishes pit to pit, sleeve and length for all four sizes, and the composition line is the one worth stopping on: 100% virgin wool, in a garment whose cloth is described as a fine wool twill. Virgin wool is a term that is widely read as a mark of quality and means nothing of the kind, it means the fibre has never been used before, and a garment can be virgin wool and coarse. What actually sets the quality of a wool is its fineness in microns, and no micron count appears. The reference is the Amal Grace Knit in Atlantic. Dongguan Bafinasa Garments Co., Ltd. develops comparable wool tops on OEM and ODM terms, from fibre and cloth selection to retail or FBA ready packing. We publish this as a development reference and build your own version of it, and we do not supply the branded original or reproduce anyone else's label.

Key Features

• 100% virgin wool as stated, made in Italy, dry clean only
• A three column table for all four sizes, with the chest grading two centimetres flat per size
• Dropped shoulders stated explicitly, which is one of the few pages in this run to name the shoulder construction. See the note below
• Half button placket and a classic collar as stated
• Oversized silhouette with long loose sleeves as stated
• Described as sitting between a knit and a shirt, in a cloth named as a twill. See the note below
• Three of four sizes in stock, with size 0 sold out

Customisable Options

• Cloth: virgin wool fine twill to the reference, with the fibre fineness in microns and the weight set to your market since neither is given
• Fibre: 100% virgin wool to the reference, or a wool nylon blend for strength, or a machine washable treated wool
• Shoulder: dropped to the reference, or set in, which changes the published sleeve figure by several centimetres
• Placket: half placket to the reference, or a full placket, or a clean front with a back neck opening
• Fit: oversized to the reference, with the ease reducible by six to eight inches
• Care: dry clean only to the reference, or a washable wool finish, quoted with its test results
• Fibre fineness, cloth weight, ease, sleeve length, body length, placket length, size set, colour development, private label and care labelling

Specifications

Size Chart as Published by the Reference

The chest figures are flat half measures taken with the garment laid down, doubling to 120, 124, 128 and 132 cm around, or 47.2 through 52.0 in. Against the body chart that is about sixteen inches of ease at size 0 falling to about fifteen at size 3, since the garment grades two centimetres of flat width per size, or four centimetres of circumference, while the body chart moves two inches, or about five centimetres. Sixteen inches is a great deal and it is what oversized means in numbers on a woven top, and it is consistent with the dropped shoulder and the loose sleeve. The sleeve grades two centimetres per size against one on the body length, and no origin is stated for it.

Our Proposed Body Chart

Occasions and Styling

Suits autumn and winter wear, work, everyday and smart casual, and it layers. A fine wool with a collar and a placket reads as the warmer cousin of a shirt, which is what the reference means by sitting between a knit and a shirt, and the oversized body means it goes over a fine knit or under a coat without bulk at the armhole.

Production and Quality Control

The reference publishes three columns for all four sizes, states its fibre composition, names the cloth as a fine wool twill, describes the shoulder, the sleeves, the collar and the placket, gives a care instruction and states the country of make. Three things follow: what virgin wool does and does not tell you, what a woven cloth is doing under a knitwear label, and what dry clean only costs the customer and the product.

Virgin wool, and the word that sounds like a grade and is not one, and that is the first thing. Virgin wool means the fibre has not been previously used in a finished product, so it is new wool rather than reclaimed or recycled wool, and that is the whole of what it says. It says nothing about how fine the fibre is, and fineness is what decides whether a wool is soft against the skin or prickles, how it drapes, how it takes dye and what it costs per kilo. Wool is graded in microns, the average diameter of the fibre, and the span is enormous: anything above about 30 microns is coarse and reads as scratchy against the neck, a good everyday merino sits in the high teens, and the finest wools run below 17 microns and cost several times as much. So a garment can be entirely virgin wool at 32 microns and be unpleasant to wear, and this page gives you the word that sounds reassuring and not the number that would tell you anything. This matters more here than on a coat, because this garment has a collar and a placket and its sleeves are described as long and loose, so it is worn in contact with the neck and the wrists, which are exactly the places a coarse fibre is felt. The fix is one number on a spec sheet and any mill can supply it. Ask for the micron count, and if a supplier will not give it, ask for the fibre diameter distribution, because a wool with a wide distribution prickles more than its average suggests. On our own developments we specify the micron and the blend on the tech pack and we confirm it on the bulk yarn or cloth certificate, because it is the single specification that most often drifts between a lab dip and a production lot.

A knit that is a twill, and why the distinction is worth keeping, and that is the second thing. The garment is filed under knitwear, it is called a knit, and its cloth is described as a fine wool twill. A twill is a weave, a way of interlacing warp and weft so the surface shows a diagonal, and a knit is a structure of interlooped yarns, and the two are made on different machines and behave differently in every respect that matters: a woven twill holds a shape and creases, a knit stretches and recovers, and the two need different patterns, different seam constructions and different ease. The reference is honest about this in its own way, since it says the piece sits somewhere between a knit and a shirt, which is a fair description of a wool shirt jacket, and that is what this appears to be. The consequence is practical rather than pedantic. A customer reading knitwear expects stretch, and a woven wool twill with sixteen inches of ease will feel generous but will not give, so the fit behaves differently from what the label promises, and a customer who sizes down expecting a knit to accommodate them may find the shoulder and the armhole do not. For a developer the point is that the two are costed differently: a knit is priced by yarn count and stitch structure and a woven by cloth weight and finish, and a spec that says wool knit without saying which will produce two quite different quotations. It is also worth noting that the shoulder is stated as dropped, which this run has rarely seen made explicit, and it is the single most useful construction word on the page, because it explains the sleeve figure. At 59 cm on the smallest size, with a dropped shoulder, the measurement almost certainly starts at the centre back or at a neck point rather than at a shoulder seam, and without that origin it cannot be compared with the 58 cm published on the set in shoulder poplin shirt earlier in this run, which is a completely different measurement that happens to land on a similar number.

Dry clean only, and what that costs, and that is the third thing. A 100% virgin wool in a fine twill is instructed as dry clean only, which is the conventional and safe instruction, and it is also an instruction with a cost attached that no retail page counts. Dry cleaning a top worn weekly through a winter is a recurring expense that can exceed a meaningful fraction of the purchase price over a season, and customers increasingly factor it in, which is part of why washable wool has become a category of its own. There is a technical reason for the instruction and it is worth stating rather than assuming the brand is being cautious. Wool fibre has a scaly surface and it felts under heat, moisture and agitation together, so a domestic wash cycle will shrink and stiffen an untreated wool, and a twill with a collar, a placket and a structured shoulder has several parts that must not shrink at different rates. But there are two established routes to a washable wool and both are worth quoting as options. The first is a chlorine based or polymer based shrink resist treatment applied to the fibre or the cloth, the machine washable wool route, which costs more and slightly changes the hand and which carries a chemical declaration. The second is to blend, since a wool with a small nylon or polyester fraction holds its dimensions far better in a wash and costs less, at some cost to the hand and to the warmth. Both are legitimate and both should be quoted alongside the dry clean version, because the decision belongs to the customer's market rather than to the mill. Then there is the rest of what the page omits. No fibre fineness, as discussed. No cloth weight, and a fine wool twill might be a 180 gram or a 260 gram cloth, which is the difference between a top that drapes and one that holds a shape. No model information, so the 58 cm length, which is short and sits at the hip, cannot be read against a height. And the size conversion line on the page reads XS/0, S/1, M/2, 3/L, which puts the number first on three entries and last on one, a small inconsistency of the kind that becomes a misorder when a customer reads quickly. Every bulk shipment gets a measurement report against your approved chart.

Optional upgrades include stating the fibre fineness in microns, which is the specification that decides how this garment feels and how much it costs and which no page in this run has published, stating the cloth weight in grams per square metre, offering a machine washable treated wool and a wool nylon blend alongside the dry clean only version and quoting all three, publishing where the sleeve is measured from, which on a dropped shoulder is the difference between a usable and a decorative number, adding a model height and body measurements, offering a set in shoulder version off the same block, a full placket and a clean front as alternatives to the half placket, a closer fit with six to eight inches less ease for anyone who wants the wool without the volume, length options, size set, colour development, private label, hangtag and care labelling.

Pre-production sample approval, in-line inspection during cutting and sewing, and a final AQL inspection before packing, with measurement reports and photos shared before shipment.

Send us your tech pack, a photo or a reference garment and we will quote within 24 hours. Contact bafinasa@bafinasa.com or WhatsApp +86 13827222469.