The sweatshirt, born in the 1920s in the USA, was initially conceived as practical athletic wear by Benjamin Russell Jr., a football player discontented with itchy wool jerseys. Its comfortable cotton fleece soon attracted non-athletes and it was quickly adopted by US military for training exercises and physical education classes.

The MILITARY PRINT SWEATSHIRT / STATUE de la LIBERTÉ calls back to the 48th Fighter Wing’s ‘Statue of Liberty Wing’, which was, and remains, the only Fighter Wing to have an official nickname and unit number in the U.S. Air Force. This was because the name was gifted by the city of Chaumont, France, where the base was originally located in the 1950s. The base and the airmen working there were beloved by the locals and the French military for their dedication and famous airshows. Around 1960, the wing was relocated to the RAF base near the town of Lakenheath, England, where the base resides to this day. The name is a reminder of the Wing’s roots, friendship and brotherhood between the U.S. and France.

The Real McCoy’s MILITARY PRINT SWEATSHIRT / STATUE de la LIBERTÉ has been made from a 10oz loopwheel cotton and features a custom patch which is an exact reproduction of the vintage design. The rear of the sweatshirt features a special rubber stencil detailing. Applying this detail by hand and carefully adjusting so the ink bleeds through, The Real McCoy’s have been able to achieve an entirely unique finish. Completing these one of a kind details is a stencil name patch, cut from an ecru HBT cloth.

Our loopwheel knitted cotton is a brushed loopback French Terry, making it warmer and softer than its un-brushed counterpart. Loopwheel machines on which this tubular constructed fabric is made, are renowned for their slow knitting pace, producing only a single meter of fabric per hour. However, this low thread tension technique is what sets them apart from contemporary manufacturing methods and creates an exceptional and distinctive fabric. The resulting material is reminiscent of hand-woven textiles and possesses a unique stretchy quality and washed look of old American sweatshirts that can only be reproduced on a loopwheel knitting machine. This loopwheel sweat is knitted in Wakayama, Japan, using extremely rare machines, known in Japan as Tsuriami-ki and even rarer skill and technique, exclusively for The Real McCoy’s.

Unlike mass-produced sweatshirts, The Real McCoy’s use different yarns across the layers of the sweat to achieve the optimal finish, density and comfort and like the best vintage sweatshirts, the gusset details featured here have been sewn in, whilst this is a time-consuming process, this adds a layer of reinforcement and prevents the neck from stretching as well as acting similarly to a sweatband.