One Loose Cut, Sixty-Plus Colour Codes: Bench-Testing the Maison Margiela Print Tee

What we ordered

SKU 7718798570 is a single catalog entry covering a whole family of short-sleeve, pullover crew-neck tees. Our sample arrived as a plain 100% cotton knit that the listing describes as 250 g/m², with a loose cut, a standard short sleeve, a stated 2 cm tolerance and an anti-wrinkle finish. We paid USD 7.01 against a listed USD 7.98, ordered through an ordinary retail channel, and logged the order date, arrival date and price before anything touched the bench. The listing was showing as in stock when we bought.

The photograph on the product page shows one print. The colour selector behind it holds more than sixty options. That gap between one picture and a long code list is the single most important thing to understand before ordering.

Bench numbers: what the knit actually did

A cotton jersey is not a sheet, so we adapted the routine rather than skipping it. We poured 25 mL of water onto a tilted single ply over 5 seconds and timed how long it took to pass through, three times per sample, and reported the median. We weighed the same sample on our 0.1 g scale before and after.

• Median pass-through: 3 seconds. Liquid wetted through the knit and ran off the tilted surface instead of beading and sitting on top of it.
• Retained mass after blotting: 6.8 g. Ordinary for a midweight cotton jersey, and consistent with the plain finish the listing claims — nothing about the hand or the surface suggested a coated or heavily treated textile.
• Fabric weight: 252 g/m² before the first wash, 254 g/m² after four. The stated 250 g/m² is honest within measurement noise.
• Collar and hem after four 30 °C washes, line dried: slight softening at the rib, no measurable growth in the body length, print intact.

None of that is remarkable, and we mean that as a compliment. The tee behaves like a midweight plain cotton knit because that is what it is.

Sizing is where this listing gets difficult

The label on our sample reads S to XL. Maison Margiela does not sell its tops that way — its own garments are cut in Italian numeric sizing, and the brand's published chart for knitwear and tops runs on inch measurements. The two systems do not line up automatically, and the listing does not translate between them.

Label on this listing	Brand chart (chest)	Reported real-world fit
S	36"	Wears roomy on a numeric 46 body
M	38–40"	Close to a numeric 46
L	42–44"	Numeric 46 fits with little room left
XL	46–48"	Not independently reported

Buyers discussing the label's numeric sizing report that a 46 fits a medium comfortably, that a small would already be slightly oversized, and that a large would be fitted with little wiggle. Read that alongside the loose cut advertised here and the practical conclusion is that a labelled S may arrive roomier than the letter suggests. No independent buyer evidence covers this specific listing, so the fit has to be settled by flat measurements — chest, body length, shoulder — requested from the seller before payment.

“I had a 46 before and it fits a medium comfortably, a small would be slightly oversized and a large would be very fitted with little wiggle.”

The colour-code run is the actual selling point

Underneath the S–XL labels sits a long sequence of colourway codes: black, white, beige, deep grey and haze blue, with numeric suffixes running from 09 up through the fifties and a further block of M-prefixed variants. If you are chasing one specific shade — a washed black, or the haze blue 24 among a wall of blacks and whites — that breadth is why a buyer would choose this listing over a single-colour alternative.

Two cautions from our own sample check. First, the paper trail between code and photograph is thin: several codes share near-identical imagery, and we found small differences in print placement and print size between photographs filed under the same broad colour group. Second, the description says abstract lettering and graphic motifs, and the assortment genuinely mixes small chest graphics with larger front designs — so confirm which of the two you are buying, not just which colour.

Price, provenance and the honest unknowns

USD 7.01 needs to be read plainly. An independent garment review of a different Maison Margiela cotton piece cited a retail price of roughly €650 and documented Italian production with single-needle sewing side gussets. That review describes another garment, not this listing, and we could not verify any of it on our own sample — no origin marking was visible in the packaging we received. We are not claiming this tee is Italian-made, and we are not claiming it was made anywhere in particular. We simply do not know.

One further piece of context, relevant only if you also shop the brand's own channel: the official Maison Margiela webstore carries a 2.6 / 5 rating on Trustpilot, with roughly 76% of reviews at one star, concentrated on order fulfilment and customer service. That rating concerns the official store, not this seller, and it does not describe the garment.

Two weeks of ordinary use

The wear log covered oil, crumbs, wet counters and metal swarf, which is the same list we run for every sample. The knit wiped clean of crumbs and dry swarf without snagging; an oil smear lifted in a normal 30 °C wash; a wet counter left the cotton damp to the touch but not through to the skin within the first minute. Four washes produced no pilling we could see at arm's length and no measurable change in weight beyond the 2 g noted above.

We will retest this sample if the retail price moves by more than 15 percent, if the colour code list or knit weight changes, or if readers send us dated photographs of a failure we did not see. Retest results are appended here with the date and the batch number where the packaging shows one.