Small Hours
For people who are usually up later than they meant to be.
This is a small shop, run by one person, making shirts about the quiet obsessions: the book you cannot put down, the chair nobody else is allowed to sit in, the hour you should have gone to bed.
The drawings are woodland things, done in muted and faded color. Ferns, toadstools, lantern light, and animals who have clearly been left alone for some time and would like that to continue. Nothing bright. Nothing shouted. The kind of picture you have to stand slightly closer to.
How the shirts are made
Nothing here is printed until somebody orders it. When you place an order it goes to a print shop, your shirt is made, and it ships to you. No warehouse, no bulk runs, no boxes of unsold mediums.
That has one obvious downside, which is that it takes longer than a shirt already sitting on a shelf. It also has two upsides worth the wait: the range can stay strange and specific instead of safe and broad, and nothing gets made that nobody wants.
Every design is printed on a Comfort Colors 1717, which is 6.1 oz of ring-spun cotton dyed after the shirt is sewn rather than before. That is why the color sits slightly unevenly and why it feels broken-in on the first wear. No two come out identical.
Three colors, on purpose
Everything comes in Ivory, Blossom and Bay, and nothing else. A warm cream, a faded pink, and a soft grey-green.
All three are pale, and that is a production decision before it is an aesthetic one. The drawings are dark, fine and heavily detailed, and detail like that only survives on a pale garment. Printing them on a dark shirt requires a white underbase laid down beneath the ink, which spreads, thickens every line and closes the small gaps the drawing depends on. Pale cotton needs no underbase at all. The ink goes straight into the weave, and the fine work stays fine.
There is a second reason, less technical. A small shop with forty color options is a spreadsheet; a small shop with three is a point of view. It also means the shirt you liked last time is still there next time, in the shade you already own.
What you will not find here
No slogans in a novelty script font. No jokes that need an exclamation mark to land. No design that exists because a keyword tool suggested it.
Where orders ship from
Shirts are printed and shipped from the United States. The shop itself is run from Singapore, by one person, at hours that explain the name.
Get in touch
Questions about fit, an order, or an idea for a shirt are all welcome, and answered by an actual person: smallhoursinc@gmail.com