A-Wear-ness, How Clever
Kenneth Cole is the latest designer to get into the “message” shirt game with his a-wear-ness series of black t-shirts. Most of them are pretty straight-forward if not slightly cliche proclamations of things most well-to-do Lefty New Yorkers would agree with without raising any real eyebrows. Probably my favorite design, although also the most out of place, is the “piece out” graphic depicting a red-strike through a hand-gun. Clearly this must speak to all of the Kenneth Cole customers who are so directly effected by gun violence on a day-to-day to basis. “The Spoils of War” (pictured) is slightly edgy and admittedly a little surprising compared to the others. While the shirts retail at a whopping $35 each, 100% of proceeds goes to Cole’s nonprofit foundation, so I guess that justifies the price. Oddly enough, the shirts are conventional cotton, and no obvious mention is made of their origins. To me the origins and contents of a shirt say a lot more than the message printed across the front in plastisol. Finally, in what can only assume is a bit of self-deprecating irony is the “Boycott designer T-shirts.” Go figure. Oh yeah, there’s a book too.
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