Sit, sit. Take the cup. Now — feel the cloth before you look at the colours, because the cloth is where the value is. This is a technical Ultra Dry stretch fabric, knitted as a piqué, which means it breathes like the classic shirt and moves like a modern one. Ultra Dry is the moisture treatment: sweat comes off the skin, spreads across the outer face, and dries. On a court in real heat, that is not a nicety.
The colour-blocking is not printed on, it is cut and sewn — contrast panels built into the sleeves, which is more work and more cost and holds its colour for the life of the shirt where a print would not. There is an embroidered tournament mark, stitched rather than transferred.
Now the detail, and I want you to notice how much of it there is.
And the crocodile is a silicone piece set at the hem, which is a small, expensive way of doing a logo. Regular fit, ribbed collar. Add those up and you are holding rather more shirt than the rack suggests, which is the only kind of purchase I take seriously.
UPF 50 sun screening is worked into the fabric.
Hafnarfjörður is my kind of town for the same reason. Everyone goes to the famous places and pays the famous rates; here the harbour is working, the lava park in the middle of town costs you nothing, and the geothermal ground out at Seltún puts on a better show than anything with a ticket booth — steaming vents, sulphur-yellow earth, boiling grey mud.
You will wear this everywhere from a hard-court tournament weekend to a warm evening of doubles, and it is also perfect for the walk down to the harbour afterwards for a bowl of plokkfiskur, which is fish, potato and butter, costs almost nothing, and is the best thing on the whole street.
The stitching tells you what a shirt is worth. The label only tells you what it wants.
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