The design on a T-shirt can have very little to do with where the garment itself was made. Today, for example, I’m wearing a Cute Overload shirt that was made by American Apparel and is made of cotton, not from winged hamsters. But Jeremy thought it was strange that a shirt his girlfriend bought at Kohl’s has “Made in the USA” in fairly large print on the front, but was made in India.

So my girlfriend recently bought a cute (for Kohl’s, anyway) t-shirt (see link). It says on the front of the shirt near the bottom of the flower print “Made in the USA” but sure enough, I checked the tag and the shirt says it was made in India.

Something about that doesn’t sit right with me — just thought you might want to warn folks that the next time they shop at Kohl’s and buy something that says “Made in the USA”, they should check the tag first to make sure Kohl’s isn’t lying to them.

It’s easy to see how this is confusing. But the shirt’s design is supposed to be a label for flower seeds. The whole “Made in the USA” thing refers to the flowers “advertised” on the shirt, not the shirt itself. Like a lot of t-shirt designs, the whole flower-label thing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense…. but it’s not designed to mislead people, either.

In the big picture, the more annoying problem is that Kohl’s claims the shirt’s original price is $30 and it’s on “sale” for $17.99, when the Sonoma brand only exists at Kohl’s, and this item was surely never sold for $30.

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