Specifying a Hoodie for a Canadian Brand
By The Velocity Wear Team
The hoodie is the anchor product for most Canadian clothing brands, for the straightforward reason that it is worn for a large part of the year. It is also the garment where the gap between price points is most obvious in the hand, and where the local climate genuinely changes what the right specification is.
Weight, in a cold market
Around 300 GSM is a light hoodie. It is what a lot of standard blank programmes ship and in most of Canada it is a shoulder-season garment rather than a winter one. 380 GSM is a solid midweight. 450 GSM is a genuine heavyweight that works as insulation under a shell and reads as substantial the moment somebody picks it up.
Weight also does structural work. The boxy, structured silhouettes that dominate current streetwear need it — an oversized pattern in light fleece does not read as oversized, it reads as too big. The shape comes from the fabric.
Loopback or brushed back
This is the specification most new brands do not know to make and it defines the product's character more than anything else. Unbrushed loopback french terry shows the loops inside, feels drier and more textured, holds its shape and resists pilling. Brushed-back fleece is napped for immediate softness, feels warmer at first touch, and pills more over a long life.
In a cold market brushed fleece has a genuine functional argument — the nap traps air and it feels warmer against the skin. Loopback ages better and reads as the more premium construction. Neither is correct; the point is to choose deliberately rather than accept whatever arrives.
The details that carry the price
- Rib with real recovery at cuffs and hem, composition stated. In a cold climate this is functional, not cosmetic — slack cuffs let cold in every time an arm moves.
- Twin-needle topstitching or a visible flatlock at the seams, which is the first thing anybody examining the garment closely will notice.
- Self-fabric taping at the neck and shoulder seam. Cheap to specify and immediately visible when the hood is folded back.
- A two-panel hood, lined in self fabric, cut with enough room to go over a beanie — a functional decision here rather than a stylistic one.
- Metal-tipped drawcords through metal eyelets, and bar tacks at the pocket openings where kangaroo pockets fail.
- A woven label rather than a printed one, since this is one of the few places a small brand is directly compared against a large one.
Fit is three numbers
Boxy, relaxed, oversized and cropped are marketing words. The specification is chest width, body length and shoulder width at your base size, and how they relate. A boxy hoodie has a chest close to or exceeding its body length and a shoulder seam sitting well past the wearer's actual shoulder.
One Canadian-specific consideration: a hoodie meant to be worn under a winter shell has to fit under one. An extremely oversized cut is a lovely garment for three seasons and unwearable in the fourth, which halves when it can be sold.
Decoration on heavyweight fleece
Heavy fleece supports decoration with presence — puff print, high-density screen print, embroidery, applied patches. A thin single-colour transfer on 450 GSM fleece looks like exactly what it is.
Tell your supplier the base is heavyweight fleece when you send artwork. Embroidery on pile needs backing specified for it or the stitching sinks into the surface, which is the usual reason a logo that looked crisp on a tee looks muddy on a hoodie. And remember the label content has to be bilingual, which needs space allocated at design stage rather than squeezed in later.
Sample before you commit
None of this can be judged from a document. Get the sample, wear it through a genuinely cold week, wash it several times, and then look at the rib, the print and the neck. Then order — 20 pieces per design with mixed sizes included is enough to launch properly, and production runs 10 to 15 working days from approval, so the sampling round is where the calendar should go.
