T-Shirt Magazine |
I’m not gonna lie, this Tee had me dyin’ in all meanings of the word. Why does high fashion feel as though it has any kind of a handle on streetwear as we know it? I love RTW and streetwear dearly, but really, these are mutually exclusive areas of fashion. This tee gaining PR velocity is a promotional design (2.0) by Dame Vivienne Westwood for the United Nations Environment Programme’s ‘GreenUp’ organization. Our chilly Keanu and Morpheus here premiered the latest series at Milan’s Men’s Fashion Week back on the 17th. If you think my taste is completely out of wack, or you want to support the cause, you can get this bad boy exclusively at yoox.com. T-Shirt Maggers, any thoughts on this? Does high fashion, for all its virtues, have any clout in T-shirt design?
Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:01:13 +0000 |
Welcome to ‘Twisted Disney’ week @T-shirt Magazine. Disneyland announced today that they were pulling their Mickey Mouse infused rendition of Joy Division’s 1979 ‘Unknown Pleasures’ album after being on sale for less than a week. Errr, what? Yes, the lovable corporation that markets merchandise and media to children worldwide tooootally thought it was cool to stamp their brand all over the iconic imagery of a tragic band known for suicide and war crime satire without that band’s explicit permission. They say Joy Division’s graphic artist, Peter Saville, modeled the original cover art after images in the public domain, so they believed they were not in copyright violation even though they explicitly marketed the shirt as ‘inspired by Joy Division’ and not ‘inspired by the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy’. After the veritable warfare of SOPA and PIPA being waged by The Walt Disney Company and others, you’d think they’d at least lead by example. Unless of course the message here is that billion dollar corporations cannot have their intellectual property rights violated, but you and especially cool post-punk bands from the 70’s tooootally can.
Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:30:34 +0000 |
What makes a great tee? Google will give you about half a billion answers to that question, but to acquiesce to the recent post of a blogger/brander not just any old schlop should qualify for that title. For me, a piece that really qualifys as great streetwear has got to grab you in the gut. You should be offended, you should curse – you should be unable to turn away. And if you have good taste, a little digging will tell you just why you couldn’t condemn a particular t-shirt to the annals of uninteresting passer-by fashion and boring web. My initial reactions to the Don’t Tell My Tailor new Classy Thinks collection were as follows: “WTFragglerock”, “Really, Really?” and when we hit the Bambi tee, “F***, that’s just wrong.” And that’s what makes it so right. Not only is this brand taking streetwear up a notch and back a century or two by custom manufacturing each shirt in their Parisian Atelier, but Walt Disney was a sadistic a**hole who deserves to have his accumulating sugary-sweet veil of dust blown away every now and again. Remember, he made your two-year-old imagine Bambi’s Mom taking two slugs to the face. Nuff [...]
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:02:55 +0000 |
A little bit of this, a little bit of that; a little bit of tattoo, a little bit of monkey-human porcelain doll. Yes, these people make t-shirts. Sometimes I wonder how certain tattoo ‘artists’ sleep at night after mangling both artistic expression and the human body in one stroke. Resident artist, James Robinson over at Sacred Stitches makes you rethink certain decisions made in ink, and pledge to hunt down a proper artist next round. His ‘Anatomy of a Mermaid’ is both fresh and classic all at once, and certainly deserving of not only a canvass on cotton but skin as well. If you are a connoisseur of oddities, then I definitely recommend poking around the other Sacred Stitches departments once you’ve snagged a few of these tees.
Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:31:12 +0000 |
Another year has come and gone. We ate, we drank, we made merry. We made babies and we made noise. Such is life. It will be another millenia until we get to share taglines about 11/11/11 on Facebook again. The earth got angry and cracked down on Japan, the NYPD did the same in Zucotti Park. Waldo and Osama finally had to say goodbye, and English people wore big hats. All the while, streetwear did what streetwear does best – re-appropriated cultural nostalgia for the common people. I present to you the top crop that made an impact on this humble blogger and no, I’m not going to rank them because we both know that’s stupid. To start with the Biggies, Alife had a pretty good year. They did some direct action with OWS and collaborated with Staple. Their website remains a quandary. Bands I would never listen to from yesteryear and beyond made staggering attempts to get a piece of their merch to go viral. Some attempts were WAY better than the music they promoted. The cream of the crop was Pierce the Veil‘s merch line. And thanks to Tumblr, some truly worthy musical nostalgia really did go viral. [...]
Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:04:17 +0000 |
The internet is like a giant game of whisper down the lane. Sometimes you get garbage at the end of the line, sometimes gold. This game started at Tod Seelie’s blog Sucka Pants, a place I recommend you come to know and love. Seelie is bar none one of my favorite photographers, I think NY Times said it best when they described him as, “a bald man sporting tattoos and a Fu Manchu mustache, camera at his eye”. Anything you ever wanted to know about living DIY counterculture in modern day Brooklyn, Seelie’s got the picture. As I tumbled down his link rabbit hole, I stumbled upon Glamour Kills, a fresh but subtle brand featured at the Vans Warped tour a couple years back and a Seelie client of yore. Its current, its catchy, and on sale. Check it here.
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:48:24 +0000 |
“Bearocalypse”…nuff said. Ever wonder why the pervasion of Bear-centric imagery has been ever growing since about the ’07 “bubble-ocalypse”? For the Clubhouse savvy, a Bull market is one where prices are ever on the rise, pushing forward as their brazen mascot. The cups never empty, the news is always good – the fantasy Wall Street reveled in for a good long while after Clinton reversed most of the Glass-Steagall Act. However, the gruesome reality for .all of down here in the shadow of cloud nine, was the coming of the Bear market – a market crashing down and money spent before it was earned. Thus, any good Subversivist can spot the cultural retort given to the Wall Street fat cats. It is my personal wish that one of the ‘Bulls’ that had a hand in crashing our economy turns around one day and comes face to face with Take Heart’s badass sword-swinging, inverted pentagram bindi-ing(?), pissed-off bear ready to chew their face off. Nuff said.
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:47:43 +0000 |
To all my Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and Festivus peeps, I apologize, this post goes out to the fat man in Red. The first is a field trip Tee – only to be had at the Golf Wang Pop-up shop/brainchild of the breakout group, Odd Future. Get this one at the old HUF space on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles and channel the deviant 14-year old with cookie icing in you: Screw Dickens, any good throw-back nerd replaces the Christmas Carol trilogy with that of Star Wars. I’m dreamin’ of a white Ton-Ton. Pick up ‘Happy Hoth-idays’ at Red Bubble: I half-get Angry Birds. I know angry Avian orbs swarming a pack of pigs make about as much sense for virtual entertainment as two Italian-American plumbers collecting change and shrooming – but still. But ‘tis the season, and I know how much you’ll appreciate this one: If you would just like to share the love in a non-secular/mythological way, then this mint by Comme des Garcons would be your speed: Now this, technically, is not Christmas cult paraphernalia: but let’s just say they did it to themselves. Cop my personal favorite in-store at Stussy Toronto or Vancouver.
Mon, 26 Dec 2011 04:49:57 +0000 |
As far as fashion is concerned, there are really two dominions over which women reign supreme: hair and shoes. The high heel cult I object to on three moral principals: #1. A lady can’t make a swift exit (aka b*tch can’t run) #2. Nobody really needs to be put on a pedestal and #3. All I can think about when I see them are Chinese lotus slippers which I associate with little broken Asian girl toes and the creepy dudes who thought that was sexy. But an over-the-top coif is a fairly guilt free treat that any girl can savor. This Tee by new brand, King Patrick totally brought me back to that scene from Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette where Kirsten Dunst falls into total ecstasy by her 4 foot high, powdered and birded up-do. Le Sigh, good times. Check out this and a line of equally sweet skateboard decks by lady design Quartet: Sandra, Henriette, Astrid & Marie.
Sat, 24 Dec 2011 05:47:43 +0000 |
Sitting on top of a stack of fresh designs? Let ‘em loose on the world in one of these upcoming contests. The first is DIM MAK founder, Steve Aoki’s quest to reinvent the wheel, or rather his iconic ‘Bearded’ tee. The winning design will be featured as a limited edition run to be sold during Aoki’s DEADMEAT tour, and the designer takes home a bounty of loot including tickets to the show, an editorial on MagneticMag and a bundle of DIM MAK merchandise. Deadline for this one is January 24, 2012. The second is the intermittent design contest run by printer and brand, Graniph. If cash is your king, then this is the way to go. 12 winners will earn cash prizes up to 500,000 Yen (about $6,400) and a run of their design printed by Graniph. The deadline for this one is March 31, 2012. Happy sketching!
Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:33:24 +0000 |
King and Queen pins of the T-boutique-chic crowd have teamed up with Truth’s smoking cessation campaign to create their own branded anti-smoking T-shirts, dubbed Truth1585. Spearheaded by Jeff Staple of Reed Space, top-shelf local labels UBIQ, ALIFE, Burn Rubber, goliath, Bodega, True and Major have all created their own custom variations of the ‘Quit Now’ message. However, living up to their exclusivity, purchase availability remains shrouded in mystery save a few hints here and there of being given away with in-store purchases. Thus, if you’ve just got to be THAT guy with the designer nag, then you’ll have to trek out to one of their storefronts near you.
Tue, 20 Dec 2011 05:00:13 +0000 |
Streetwear brand Cashletes has just released its 2012 Preseason collection, consisting of 8 new t-shirts from the teams of the Financial Champions League. This vibrant collection boldly displays each team’s logo and team colors via screen printed 100% cotton. Each tee has additional sleeve prints and a Cashletes jock tag stitched at the bottom hem. View the entire collection at the Cashletes Shop, and take advantage of their current Holiday promotion: Enter CASH4XMAS at checkout for $10 off (Offer valid through the end of 2011).
Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:11:01 +0000 |
WISH is arguably one of the greatest style outposts in the ATL, if not the best. As the connoisseur of crispy cool, Lauren Amos stocks an enviable collection of the current ‘most wanteds’: from the Hundreds to Leaders and from Reebok to Vans. Shopping after the advent of the internet more and more seems like voluntarily showering in crap and praying that the last drop to land in your face is something you actually like – its not like that here (these Bassquiat pumps for example). For the superb legwork at WISH, these exquisite featured brands are more than willing to collaborate on the house line. The latest mint is the ‘Do Your Research’ combo with 10.Deep; an homage to Wish’s ‘Shoe Library’, the former first Carnegie Library in Atlanta.
Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:17:03 +0000 |
Burton and PepsiCo are launching a new line of recycled PET and organic cotton duds for the 2012 and 2013 seasons coined the Green Mountain Project. This mainstream move into bottle repurposing for fabric shows a gaining traction for the ‘semi’-sustainable manufacturing process. The first brand I know of to attempt PET fabric construction is Playback Clothing circa 2009. They were hardcore on the dream, but with only a few behind the scenes moves, they’ve never managed to really take off (or update their webpage for that matter). A good portion of their hype was based on the Life Cycle Analysis done by Yale Alumni, Jen Aces Wild, the self proclaimed ‘Corporate Environmentalist’. If you are considering hopping on the PET bandwagon or just curious about claims of sustainability, check out her site here. To find the GMP Burton tees visit your nearest flagship store in LA, Chicago, Burlington VT, NYC, Innsbruck Australia or Tokyo Japan.
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:36:20 +0000 |
Traumatized by the recent on-campus police state at UC Davis? Memorialize it with a t-shirt. Why Not? Stressed Dressed is a newly launched brand that satires some of America’s shining moments in recent history. Boston Mike offers a fully customizable print-on-demand set-up so you can adorn yourself in sarcasm of various cuts, colors, and a few of your own choice words. Get ‘em here.
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:49:36 +0000 |
The Ubiquity label is a California establishment. The kind of place that you click your heels for and say “There’s no place like my record shop”. For more than two decades they’ve been pumpin’ out smooth grooves from their various record labels, and more recently a smooth line of t-shirts. From now until December 10th, check out their tunes and tees for 50% off with code WIN2011. http://t-shirtmagjules.hubpages.com/hub/T-shirt-Magazine?done
Tue, 22 Nov 2011 02:18:45 +0000 |
What the hell is this crap? I look at this and my initial reaction is that I’d better find my cellphone because Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen have just body snatched my 16-year-old cousin and her mother should know about it. But then, suddenly, the kid inside of me who raved in the 1990’s wrenches out of the depths and screams, “YESSSSSSSSSSS” (glowsticks in tandem). After placing that one firmly back in check, I’ve got to agree that there is something of the flair from back when coming full circle in these tees. Not to mention a good bit of sport reading into the innuendo of ‘Over Easy’. Before I know it, I’m hooked. And yes, dammit, I read their Tumblr and it rrrrruled (see below). Check out the Winter 2011 line of Petals + Peacocks here.
Sun, 20 Nov 2011 04:11:26 +0000 |
Every T-shirt junkie needs a little piece of the authentic underground. Catch a little of this ‘Mitumba’ style comin’ straight out of Nairobi, Kenya – well, sort of. The tees offered by Project Repat boast lush lifelines: they begin here in the States, are bought by me and you, are loved, worn, and donated to local resellers, after a while the resellers pack up their stock and ‘dump’ sell them to countries all over the world, those that make it to Kenya are sold (again) to resellers, who in turn sell them to individuals who set up shop in local marketplaces. From there, Project Repat dives in to salvage tees whose love affairs with owners Stateside can surely be rekindled. Artisans and seamstresses create t-shirt Frankensteins after the trends sweeping Kenya and add those dope bleach lines which apparently are so last year in Kenya but are totally current here. Project Repat then packs ‘em up and takes ‘em home for a double wash and puts them up for sale. Check out this amazing documentary the team put together from their last Kickstarter campaign, and pledge at least $25 to their new campaign to get first dibs on the fresh [...]
Thu, 17 Nov 2011 04:15:40 +0000 |
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