Null-Signal Elbow Jersey

The nervous system is poor at ignoring continuous low-grade input. A scratchy seam at the nape, a polyester thread at the armhole, a satin care-label rubbing the spine — none of these register as pain, which is precisely the problem. They register as background vexation, and the body files them under chronic sympathetic arousal. Cortisol accumulates. You do not know why you are tense by midday. Your shirt knows.

This jersey resolves it.

The fabric is 95% combed ring-spun cotton, 5% elastane. Combed, not carded — the combing removes the short fibre ends that prickle. Ring-spun, not open-end — the yarn is denser, smoother, and less likely to abrade the body over twelve hours. The 5% elastane is core-spun: a filament of elastane wrapped in cotton, so the surface against skin remains cotton throughout. The garment stretches with the arm, recovers without resistance, and stays fitted without compressing the rib cage or transmitting tension to the body underneath.

Every seam that touches skin uses cotton thread in the bobbin. Every hem is finished with a twin-needle stretch stitch — flat against the wrist and the hip, not ridged, not banded. The neck binding is cut from the body fabric on the cross-grain, folded once, serged into the neckline, and topstitched flat. There is no satin label. No woven trim. No rib cuff. No edge against the nape. The brand mark is stamped directly into the binding interior with soft-hand fabric paint, heat-set at the elastane limit. It washes. It does not lift.

The neon topstitch — acid green, at the body hem, the sleeve hems, and the neck binding — is visible only from outside. It sits on the face of the fabric. The bobbin side (the skin side) is cotton thread in a matched neutral. The neon is engineering made visible, not decoration made brave.

The sleeves terminate 2–3 cm above the elbow crease. With the arm flexed to 90°, the hem clears the joint by 4–5 cm. The elbow is the most articulated joint on the upper body. Most sleeve hems choose not to acknowledge this.

The glow-in-the-dark rubber patch at the heart is the one signal this garment intentionally sends. Upper-left chest, heart position — 16 cm below the shoulder seam, 9 cm left of centre. Solar-charged under daylight. Released after dark. The hand finds it without looking. The gesture is the one the body is already inclined to make.

Pull. Settle. Forget.