Have you seen our new Motions collection? If not, take a look. It features three new pieces of artwork for T-shirts and sweatshirts. When we were writing descriptions for these items, we included the fact that the T-shirts offer shoulder-to-shoulder taping. If you don't know what that means, this blog post is for you.

The term itself can be used to describe both clothing and a medical procedure. We are obviously concerned about the clothing aspect. But just to bring you up to speed, we will briefly discuss the medical procedure as well. When you're finished reading, be sure to check out our Motion collection.

Taping for T-shirts

Clothing designers and tailors do a lot of interesting things to make their clothing stronger and more aesthetically pleasing. One of those things is taping. We see it a lot in the construction of high-end T-shirts, though it is not limited to this particular type of clothing. Any piece of clothing could be taped.

Taping is essentially a small strip of fabric that gets sewn over a seam. It can be sewn over the top, over the bottom, or even on both sides. The point is two-fold. First, taping makes the seam stronger. It disperses force when the fabric is under load, thereby reducing the chances that the seam will separate.

Second, the taping hides the seam. Some people think this makes for a more attractive garment. When you are talking about T-shirts, shoulder-to-shoulder taping involves a strip of cloth that runs from the far end of one shoulder clear across to the far end of the other. It runs along the back of the neck as it goes.

Taping As a Medical Procedure

In the world of sports medicine and physical therapy, shoulder taping is a practice of applying pieces of adhesive, non-stretch tape in specific locations to restrict movement. Shoulder-to-shoulder taping would involve multiple pieces of tape stretching across the shoulders and meeting at the neck.

Here are some common reasons for taping the shoulders:

• Protecting shoulders that are already healing from injury
• Preventing shoulders from experiencing a recurring injury
• Getting an athlete back into competition more quickly
• Helping strengthen an injured shoulder during rehabilitation
• Improving on-field performance even without injury.

The practice of taping in pro sports is not a new phenomenon. It goes back a long, long time. For example, football players have long taped up their ankles, wrists, and even hands to prevent injury. Taping immobilizes certain structures so that the risk of injury is less.

Taping and High-Quality Garments

Getting back to clothing, you see taping a lot in high quality garments. Everything from T-shirts to jackets and slacks can be taped. As you might expect, taping requires extra material and another step or two. But you end up with a much better garment. The downside is that you need to pay a bit extra for it.

The T-shirts in our new Motion collection offer shoulder-to-shoulder taping. We think the extra taping makes for a better-quality T-shirt that is going to last longer. And given that they feature our original artwork, we want them to last as long as possible.

Can you buy a better-quality T-shirt elsewhere? Perhaps, though we wouldn't bet on it. You definitely can't find T-shirts with our original anime artwork anywhere else. Umai artwork is unique to our brand.