That bargain tee isn't cheap. It's just cheap for you.
We've all been there. You're scrolling, you see it — a t-shirt for $5. Maybe $8. Sometimes less. It's your size, it ships free, and honestly it looks fine. You add it to cart without thinking twice.
That's exactly how it's supposed to work.
But here's the question nobody puts on the price tag: if you're paying $5, who's paying the rest?
Because a t-shirt doesn't actually cost $5 to make. Not even close.
The Math Doesn't Add Up
A standard cotton t-shirt requires roughly 700 gallons of water to produce — from growing the raw cotton to finishing the fabric. The cotton itself is typically treated with pesticides and synthetic fertilisers that degrade soil, contaminate waterways, and affect the health of farming communities nearby.
Then there's the cutting, the sewing, the dyeing, the finishing. Each step in a fast fashion supply chain is optimised for one thing: speed at the lowest possible cost.
That cost gets passed somewhere. It's never passed to the brand.
The People Making Your $5 Tee
The garment industry employs over 300 million people worldwide — the majority of them women in developing countries. In the fast fashion model, those workers are paid poverty wages, often in unsafe conditions, with little to no enforced labour protections.
The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh — where over 1,130 garment workers died — wasn't an anomaly. It was a consequence. A consequence of a system that treats human labour as the cheapest variable in the equation.
Your $5 tee didn't get cheap by magic. It got cheap because someone absorbed the cost the price tag didn't show.
The Environmental Tab
Fashion is one of the most polluting industries on the planet. Here's what that looks like in practice:
- The industry is responsible for around 10% of annual global carbon emissions
- 85% of textiles end up in landfill or incinerated each year
- Synthetic fabrics shed microplastics with every wash, accumulating in oceans and entering the food chain
- Most fast fashion garments are worn an average of 7 to 10 times before being discarded
That $5 tee has a long, expensive afterlife. It just gets billed to the planet instead of your card.
The Hidden Cost to You
Beyond ethics and environment, there's a more personal cost that's easy to overlook.
Fast fashion is designed to fall apart.
The fabric thins after a handful of washes. The print cracks. The seams pull. The colour fades. Six months later you're back on the same website, buying another $5 tee to replace the last one — and the cycle starts again.
It's not a bargain. It's a subscription you never signed up for.
A Different Way to Think About It
We're not here to tell you how to spend your money. But we think it's worth asking a different question when you shop for clothing:
Not how little can I pay? — but what am I actually getting?*
A t-shirt made from 100% organic cotton costs more to produce because the cotton is grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilisers, the farming practices protect soil health and water sources, and the fabric is built to last — wash after wash, wear after wear.
At My Lucky Tee, every garment we print on is made to order. No overproduction. No warehouse full of unsold stock heading to landfill. Just one shirt, made when you order it, printed with original artwork designed to mean something.
It costs more than $5. Quite a lot more.
But when you do the real maths — cost per wear, quality of fabric, weight of the artwork, knowledge of where it came from — it's actually the better deal.
What to Look For
If you're ready to shop differently, a few things worth checking before you buy:
- Organic cotton certification — look for GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified fabrics
- Print on demand or made to order — no overproduction, no waste
- Transparent supply chain — brands that can tell you where and how their garments are made
- Original artwork — supports independent artists rather than mass-produced graphic mills
- Care guidance — brands that make clothes to last will tell you how to keep them that way
The Bottom Line
The $5 t-shirt isn't a bargain. It's a transfer — of cost, of consequence, of responsibility — from the brand to the workers, the planet, and eventually back to you when it falls apart in three months.
Buying better doesn't mean buying more. It means buying things worth keeping.
That's the only kind of clothing we make.
So What Does a Better Choice Look Like?
It starts with how something is made and what it's made from.
At MyLuckyTee every item is made to order — printed only when you buy it. No overproduction. No warehouse full of shirts waiting for a buyer that never comes.
We prioritize organic cotton where possible, water-based inks across all apparel printing, and materials we're willing to be transparent about — including the ones that aren't perfect.
If you want to understand exactly what goes into what you're buying:
- Our Print Standards
- Our Materials
Because the first step away from fast fashion is simply knowing what you're stepping toward.
Browse our original art tees, hoodies and sweatshirts — all printed on organic cotton, made to order, designed to last. Shop the Collections →
