Giza cotton gets thrown around as a premium buzzword often enough that it's worth asking plainly: what is it, actually, and does the extra cost hold up?
It's named after the region in Egypt where it's grown, and the reason it commands a higher price comes down to fibre length. Giza cotton has an extra-long staple — the individual cotton fibres run longer than standard cotton, often well past 34mm compared to under 28mm for typical upland cotton. Longer fibres can be spun into finer, stronger, smoother yarn, with fewer loose fibre ends poking out of the weave. That's the entire physical basis for why it feels the way it does: smoother against skin, with less of the slightly fuzzy texture you get from short-staple cotton.
Length also affects durability in a way that isn't obvious until you've owned a garment for a year. Short-staple cotton sheds tiny fibres every wash, which is why cheaper cotton tees pill and thin out faster — the short fibres work loose from the weave over time. Long-staple cotton holds together longer, simply because there's more fibre length locking into the yarn to begin with.
None of this means every long-staple claim on a label is honest — "Egyptian cotton" gets used loosely in the industry, sometimes accurately, sometimes as marketing shorthand for cotton that merely passed through Egypt at some stage. What actually matters is the staple length itself, and whether the finishing process — spinning, weaving, mercerising — respects what that length is capable of.
So the price difference isn't purely branding. It reflects a fibre that behaves differently under a microscope, and that difference shows up exactly where you'd want it to: in how the fabric feels on day one, and in how much of that feeling survives to wash number fifty.