Five tracksuits, and every last one of them rings up at $124. Not roughly $124 — the same figure sitting on all five product pages, which struck me as odd enough that I went back and read them twice. That flat number is what makes the set-against-separates question worth a few minutes at Tyler the Creator Merch, because the pieces you’d buy instead don’t line up with it the way you might assume.
Two tops add up to more than one set, and that part is simply true. A hoodie runs $85 to $95 here, a graphic tee opens at $70, so the pair lands somewhere around $155 to $165 against the tracksuit’s $124. That’s thirty-odd dollars. I don’t think it’s the number that should decide anything, though, and most of what follows is about why not.
A set and two tops aren’t the same purchase
This is the bit the arithmetic quietly skips over. A tracksuit hands you a top and a bottom. A hoodie plus a tee hands you two tops. So the thirty dollars you appear to pocket isn’t a discount on the same goods at all — you’re holding a whole outfit up against two halves of a different one, and whether that counts as saving money depends on whether you wanted bottoms to begin with.
If you already own four pairs of black sweatpants, which plenty of people reading this will, then the lower half of that set is close to dead weight and your $124 buys one piece you’ll reach for and one you’ll forget. Flip it around though. If you’ve got nothing you’d happily wear under a loud front print, the two-top route leaves you shopping somewhere else afterward, and that trip never turns up in anybody’s comparison.
Running the numbers side by side
| What you buy | Cost | Pieces | Per piece |
| Any of the five tracksuits | $124 | 2 | $62 |
| CHROMAKOPIA Green Hoodie plus the Dancing Tee | $155 | 2 | about $78 |
| Vintage Hoodie plus the Dancing Tee | $165 | 2 | about $83 |
| A hoodie on its own | $85 to $95 | 1 | $85 to $95 |
| A graphic tee on its own | $70 | 1 | $70 |
Sixty-two dollars a piece. That sits under the $70 the cheapest tee in the shop asks for, which means each half of a tracksuit works out to less than the least expensive single item on the whole site — and honestly that’s a stronger argument for the set than the $370 crossed out above the price.
Shipping lands on top of all of those rows, $25 at the slowest tier, and it doesn’t much care how many pieces traveled in the box, so it nudges things further toward the set. Not by much. But it nudges.
What the matching halves cost you
Here’s the other side of it, and this is where I’d slow down a bit. A matching set matches, which sounds like stating the obvious until you’ve lived with one for a season. The two halves look superb together in a photo and then spend most of their actual life apart, each one faintly giving off the impression that it has misplaced its partner.
There’s a fit problem hiding in there too. The size chart the shop publishes gives a chest range and a waist range, and a two-piece set has to work on both at once, where a hoodie only ever needs to clear one of them. Separates let you size each piece for the body part it covers. A set asks you to compromise somewhere.
- Mixing eras goes out the window. A CHROMAKOPIA top over Call Me If You Get Lost bottoms isn’t something a single set will ever give you.
- Five prints and colorways, not sixty-eight. The hoodie grid alone runs to 68 pieces, so the set narrows your choice of artwork enormously.
- Both halves arrive in one order, so a wrong call on either one turns into an exchange or store credit rather than money back.
None of that argues against buying a tracksuit. It’s just the part of those thirty dollars that doesn’t show up as money.
Five options, one price
Because all five carry the identical $124, your budget has nothing whatsoever to say about which tracksuit you end up with, and I find that a relief rather than a frustration. No weighing a print you like slightly less against a figure you like slightly more. The decision collapses into one question: which of the five would you still want to pull on in March?
| Pro Tip: I open all five tracksuit pages in separate tabs before I look at anything else, since the price column reads the same down the row and the only thing left to weigh is the print. |
Who I’d point at which
Who the set actually suits
Someone buying one thing this season rather than three. Someone who genuinely wants bottoms and hasn’t got a pair worth pairing with a graphic top. And someone whose chest and waist sit in roughly the same place on the chart, because that person isn’t compromising on anything to get both halves in one order. At $62 a piece it’s the best per-item figure in the shop.
When two pieces win
If you wear hoodies over jeans most of the week, two tops will see far more daylight than a set will, even at the higher total. Same goes if you want two eras in your wardrobe — an IGOR tee and a Save the Bees hoodie cover more ground than one tracksuit can. And if your top and bottom sizes genuinely differ, separates are the safer thirty dollars to spend, given that a size mistake here ends in an exchange rather than a refund.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I buy just the top half?
Not as a listed option. The tracksuits carry one price for the pair, and no figure for either half on its own appears anywhere on the page, which is exactly why the nearest honest comparison is a hoodie plus a tee from the rest of the Tyler The Creator Merch catalogue. A kangaroo pocket, ribbed hems and an adjustable hood turn up on every listing regardless.
Is $124 a permanent price?
I wouldn’t bet on it. That number sits beneath a banner shouting FLAT 70% OFF, and banners come down, so treat $124 as what the five tracksuits ask today rather than what they’ll ask after the next drop lands.
What if the top fits and the bottoms don’t?
You’re into the shop’s exchange and store credit route, since refunds aren’t on offer, and there’s a 30-day window with the unworn and still-tagged conditions you’d expect. Another piece in this series goes through that fine print properly.
So the $124 isn’t really a bargain or a trap, it’s a question about your own wardrobe wearing a price tag. Two tops beat a set for anyone who already has bottoms covered, and the set wins comfortably for anyone who doesn’t, which is a duller answer than the thirty-dollar gap suggests. Worth checking what’s hanging in your closet before you check which print you like best.
