IKITAI

One person. IKITAI is run by me, from India, and Drop 001 is the first thing it has ever sold. The art is drawn for this label and nothing else, the cotton is 280GSM against the 180GSM most printed tees use, and the run is twenty shirts because twenty is what one person can get right the first time.

I am telling you this because it is the thing you would want to know before paying up front for a shirt that does not exist, and because you would work it out in a week anyway.

GSM stands for grams per square meter — it's how fabric weight is measured. Standard fast-fashion tees are 150-180GSM (thin, see-through after a few washes). Our 280GSM cotton is heavyweight, structured, and holds its shape wash after wash. Hoodies are 320GSM. You'll feel the difference the moment you hold it.

Because the shirt doesn't exist yet. We take a fixed number of paid orders, print exactly that many, and send them. Nothing is sitting in a warehouse, and nothing is made that nobody asked for.

The window closes on 11 October 2026, or when 20 tees are paid for — whichever happens first. Printing starts in Tirupur the week after. Every parcel ships by 1 November 2026. If yours hasn't shipped by that date, you get a full refund without having to ask for it.

Yes, worldwide, at a flat $12 with full tracking. Every parcel in this run leaves together once printing finishes, so the ship date is the same for everyone: 1 November 2026. From there it's a few days inside India and 7–15 business days internationally. We ship from India, and every package includes the dust bag and sticker pack.

Payment is in full, up front — card or UPI via Razorpay. There is no cash on delivery, and that isn't us being awkward: on a made-to-order run, COD means printing a shirt for someone who can still refuse the parcel at the door. One refused box out of twenty is the difference between this run working and not working.

Never. Only what was paid for gets printed, and the run is never reopened. This isn't artificial scarcity dressed up as a countdown — there is no second batch of this shirt because there was never a first batch sitting in a warehouse. Join the list below and you'll hear when the next piece opens.

Chest, length and shoulder measurements in centimetres are in the size picker — they come up when you click the shirt, before you pay. Read them rather than guessing from the letter: these run oversized on purpose, so your usual size in a high-street tee is not a reliable guide.

Measure a shirt you already own flat across the chest and compare. If you are between two sizes, size down for a normal fit or stay true for the oversized look the shirt is cut for. We cannot swap sizes after printing, so this is the one part worth two minutes.

Cancel for a full refund any time before printing starts — nothing has been made yet, so there is nothing to lose by letting you out. If your order arrives damaged or doesn't match our size guide, we replace it free of charge. If it hasn't shipped by 1 November 2026, you get a full refund without asking.

Once it is printed, we can't take a change-of-mind return, because your shirt is printed because you ordered it — there is no next customer for it. So read the measurements before you pay. Nobody has worn one of these yet, which means we have no returns data to quote at you either way; we'd rather say that than pretend otherwise.

If you are in the UK or the EU you also have a statutory 14-day right to cancel after delivery, and we honour it in full instead of claiming the made-to-order exemption. The whole policy is on the returns and refunds page.

IKITAI (生きたい) is Japanese for "I want to live." It's the primal urge to exist, to fight, to refuse to disappear. Our designs draw from the Japanese mythology of creatures that embody this — yūrei (ghosts who can't move on), oni (demons of rage), shinigami (death gods). The desire to live, expressed through darkness.