About Us
The number on the label that isn't the size
Look inside almost any garment and you'll find a fiber percentage: 95% cotton, 5% elastane. Most people read it as a quality signal — more cotton, better shirt.
It doesn't work that way. The percentage tells you what the fabric is made of. It says nothing about what it'll do.
Two shirts, both 100% cotton, can behave completely differently — one holds its shape for years, the other bags out at the elbows in a month. The composition is identical. What differs is the yarn and the knit, and neither appears on the label.
Three things that do predict it
Fabric weight, in grams per square meter. A 140 g/m² t-shirt is light and drapes; a 220 g/m² one is substantial and holds structure. Same cotton, entirely different garment. It's the single most useful number a clothing retailer can publish, and almost nobody does.
Yarn thickness, sometimes given as a "single" or "double." Single-jersey is thinner and softer to start with. Double-knit is denser and keeps its shape longer. Neither is better — they suit different things, and you should know which you're buying.
Where the elastane sits. Two percent stretch in a woven shirt gives ease of movement. Ten percent in a knit means the garment relies on it — and elastane degrades faster than the cotton around it, so the whole piece ages at the speed of its weakest fiber.
We publish fabric weight and construction on every product page. It's in the supplier specification, it costs nothing to share, and it's what we'd want to know.
What we look for
Weight and construction before appearance. A great deal of what's produced now is finished to feel good for five minutes — softeners rinse out in the first wash and take the softness with them.
Fiber length where it's stated. Long-staple cotton pills less and wears more slowly. New, you can barely tell. At eight weeks, you can.
Seam allowance. Turn a garment inside out. Six millimeters means a tailor can't alter it; fifteen to twenty means it can be taken in, let out, or shortened. A garment that can be altered is a garment you keep.
Fit graded across the whole size range, not scaled up from one sample. Done carelessly, a garment works for some customers and quietly doesn't for everyone else.
Plenty doesn't clear that. That's why the range stays small enough that we can say something specific about every item.
What we don't do
Chase trends. By the time one reaches the shops it's already fading, and buying into it guarantees a closet with an expiration date.
Inflate prices to discount them. The price is the price. It doesn't get marked up in September so it can be marked down in November, and there's no "was $189" that was never $189.
Manufacture urgency. No countdown timers, no "only two left" when there are two hundred.
Overclaim. A shirt won't change your life. What good clothes do is quieter — you stop noticing them. No adjusting in the mirror, no second-guessing at the door.
That's the whole ambition. Not transformation. Just being properly dressed and free to think about something else.
One thing worth knowing about washing
Skip the fabric conditioner, and skip the dryer where you can.
Conditioner coats fibers and dulls color. Heat is what breaks elastane — a garment that's washed forty times and line-dried outlasts one washed twenty times and tumbled.
That advice costs us repeat sales from people replacing worn-out clothes. It's also true.
Ask us before you order
Not sure about the size, how a fabric drapes, or whether a piece can be altered if it's slightly off?
Email us. Tell us the size you normally wear and which brand it's from, and we'll tell you honestly which way to go — including when the answer is that a piece runs small, or that none of ours is right for what you're describing.
We'd rather give good advice than process a return.
How we make it straightforward
- Free shipping across the US, with no minimum
- 30 days to return, including on sale items
- Changed your mind or ordered the wrong size? That's covered — no reason needed
- Try things on over your own clothing with the tags on; that won't affect your return
- No restocking fees
- A reply within one business day, from a person
Where we are
Marlenna LLC is an online store registered in Denver. There's no showroom — the address below is for correspondence, not visits, and returns can't be dropped off there.
Email: support@marlenna.com
Phone: +1 (303) 388-3900
Customer service: Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM–9:00 PM MT
Saturday, Sunday and holidays: closed.
Marlenna LLC
Business address: 3000 East 1st Avenue, Denver, CO 80206, United States