What is EXODUS underwear made of?

Start with the fabric

The fabric is the whole argument, so it is worth being specific about it rather than settling for the word cotton.

It is 100% GOTS-certified organic cotton, knit at 200gsm. GOTS is a field-to-garment standard, which means the certification follows the fibre through growing and processing rather than being applied to a finished product at the end. There is no polyester and no elastane in the fabric, so the give comes from knit structure and fabric weight rather than from an elastomer doing the recovery work.

That last point is the practical trade. A cotton knit relaxes slightly across a day and comes back on wash, where a blend holds its shape by chemistry. Some people prefer the blend for exactly that reason, and the honest framing is a preference rather than a ranking. See 100% cotton boxer briefs for what that trade feels like in wear.

Component by component

Two rows in that table say “not published”. They are there because leaving them out would make the table look more complete than the facts are. A sewing thread is a small fraction of a garment by mass and it is also, in most apparel, polyester. We have not published ours, so we are not going to imply it is cotton.

The two certifications, and what each one is for

They are constantly used interchangeably and they cover different things.

GOTS, the Global Organic Textile Standard, is a supply-chain standard. It certifies organic fibre content and the processing that turns fibre into a garment: which chemical inputs are permitted, how wastewater is handled, and social criteria at the facilities involved. It works forward from the field.

OEKO-TEX Standard 100 is a product test. It takes the finished article and tests it against limit values for a defined list of harmful substances, with tighter limits for articles in direct skin contact, which is the class underwear sits in. It works backward from what you actually receive.

Neither one substitutes for the other. GOTS does not lab-test the finished garment you are handed. OEKO-TEX says nothing about whether the cotton was organically grown. The full breakdown is in what makes underwear non-toxic.

What the testing found, and what that sentence means

Goshen has been third-party lab tested clear of azo dyes, heavy metals, and carcinogens, alongside the OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certification on the dyes.

“Tested clear of” is worth unpacking, because most brands use the phrase without defining it and it does not mean what a casual reader assumes.

It means: for the substances within the test’s scope, the measured level was below the standard’s limit value. It does not mean a laboratory confirmed the absence of every molecule on earth. No test does that. Analytical chemistry has detection limits, standards have substance lists, and both are finite. A result of “not detected” is a statement about a specific assay for a specific compound at a specific sensitivity.

That is still a substantial claim, and it is far more than an untested garment can say. It is just not the infinite claim the phrasing invites, and we would rather you have the calibration than the impression.

What is deliberately absent

• No elastane in the panels. The fabric is cotton, so it relies on knit structure and fabric weight for give rather than on an elastomer. See 100% cotton boxer briefs.
• No polyester in the fabric, so no synthetic fibre shedding from the panels in the wash.
• No sewn-in tag.
• No water-repellent, stain-release, or anti-static finish. Those finishes are the usual route by which fluorinated chemistry reaches a garment. Underwear has no functional need for any of them.

Limits of this page

The gaps in our own disclosure, what the certifications do not cover, and what we have not measured yet.

• The sewing thread composition is not published. In most apparel it is polyester. We are not claiming ours is cotton.
• The lab reports are not posted. You are taking our written claim rather than reading a document. That is weaker than a link and we are not going to describe it as transparency until the documents are up.
• GOTS does not test the finished garment for residue levels, and OEKO-TEX Standard 100 does not certify organic content. Two certifications is not one super-certification, and brands blur this constantly.
• Neither standard covers microplastic shedding. There is no certification for it. The no-shedding argument for this garment rests on the composition, not on a mark.
• We make no health, hormonal, or fertility claim. Materials and certification are what we can evidence. A garment is not a medical intervention and we will not describe one as if it were.
• Certification is annual and article-specific. An OEKO-TEX certificate covers a defined article for a defined period. It is not a permanent property of a brand, ours included, and the honest way to read any brand's badge is to ask which article and which year.