the district

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.

I kind of feel like I have written about Black Sheep Heap before, but for the life of me couldn’t find a post.  Anyway, they have announced their Pre-holiday Semi-Luddite t-shirt and tote sale.  The sale works like this, you buy a shirt online and then like magic Black Sheep will send you 15% back via paypal.  No explanation as to why they don’t just lower the online price by 15%, but hey there is a recession on, who cares its a discount.  Additionally, no word on whether that is 15% before or after paypal takes their cut.  Come to think of it, this should maybe be called the “we love Paypal fees” Sale.  Anyway, some pretty awesome t-shirt and tote prints handmade here in NYC on 100% organic blanks. Check it out.

Ok, I will keep this brief because this actually has nothing to do with socially conscious apparel, as Gildan is about as bad as it gets, but… Cheap shirts that are pretty cool.  Monstar $6.66 Halloween Sale is a great place to score some cheap shirts.  In particular the Monzilla is pretty cool and so is the Misfits one.  Otherwise, I do have to point out that this logo loks real familiar from somewhere else, but I can’t place it. Still, check it out at Monstar’s Big Cartel page.

I recently received an email about a new(ish) t-shirt company, which is based in Italy or California or Australia and prints on bamboo and organic cotton Alternative Apparel T’s.  As I sat down to write review I googled the company’s name, Frustone, to try and get some background on what exactly it means when I stumbled upon a review written by Andy at Hide Your Arms, which pretty much said everything I was already going to say, so maybe you should just go read that.

However, if you really want to hear what I have to say about the line, read on.  Basically, after reading the email and the ‘About’ page on their website I walked away feeling like the company is based on an inside joke that I don’t quite get. Maybe its a translation issue or maybe (and likely) I’m just not hip enough to use phrases like “It would be very monkey drummer if …”   That being said after looking at the website, it seems like they are having lots of fun being Frustone-y so more power to them.  Additionally, despite my lack of understanding I do like the shirts and always applaud the use of Alternative Apparel over American Apparel, and using water-based inks.  The designs are simple and iconic, and all have the word Frustone on them.  The Neil Armstrong design (pictured above) is definitely my favorite, while the MLK print lacks enough detail to really be clear.  As previously mentioned the use of bamboo/cotton blends from Alternative Apparel make for a pretty comfortable shirt, although they are not cheap, making the 20 Euro price-tag seem pretty reasonable. You can view the website here, its Frustone.

“After all, in the wise words of Mr. T, ‘Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt don’t wear clothes with your name on it, so why should you wear their name?’”

Using a quote like that to help explain 6 Foot Owl’s raison d’etre certainly earns them points here, because well, its just so true.  SFO is a new clothing label (or at least clothing embellisher) based on the pretty simple idea of sprucing up basic garments (such as Alternative Apparel T’s) with original hand painted art.  As they are all originals the range of designs is pretty broad, with some of them being significantly more compelling than others.  I must say that despite my general disdain for everything having to do with the resurgence of cassette tapes their “devil’s music” shirt is definitely worthy of note.  Most of the t-shirts are priced between $60 and 80, which is a lot for a shirt, but a pretty reasonable number for a piece of art.  I guess its up to the buyer to decide if they are buying art or apparel before their purchase to establish what kind of value they are getting.  According to the website (presumably) lower priced screen printed shirts are coming soon.   Hopefully a website restructuring is also on the way, as the site unforgivably gives precious little real-estate to photography making it very difficult to view designs.  Oh yeah, this one rocks too:

Ok, well maybe that it is not technically true, or even a little bit true for that matter, but John kruse’s new website “How to Start a Clothing Company” is a welcome addition to available online resources for budding t-shirt entrepreneurs. The site features simple straight forward design and some pretty insightful information to boot. The content varies between advice from established t-shirt producers like Johny Cupcakes (visited his store on Newbury and understand it even less now) and Eric Terry from Linty Fresh, to more practical information about taxes and incorporation options. Posts are also neatly divided into useful categories such as Design, Marketing, E-commerce etc. While the site is still clearly in its early stages, it is definitely worth checking out, if not for anything more than some of the interviews. Additionally, it should be interesting to track the growth of content as the site’s founder progresses down the road with his own t-shirt line Mediocore Clothing.
on a side note, sorry for the dearth of posts lately but I was in Hotlanta.

Not I’m not one to generally just pass along coupon codes for the sake of promoting a sale, but I actually really like these designs from INDVSl.  I don’t know much about the outfit, except that by judging from their pictures they are probably in SoCal. Also, they have achieved the nearly  impossible task of having an entire  website in Flash without it being totally obnoxious. Most of the prints are pretty fresh, and I also like that they do some printing on other AA styles like the track jacket and scoop-neck women’s shirt.  While it is nice to see the style variation, one does have to ask, “Who the hell thought it was a good idea to print sleeveless men’s t-shirts?”  Anyway check it out and use coupon code ‘ilovefall’ for 30% 0ff.  Word: http://www.indivisualclothing.com/

So usually I am trying to get Karl at T-critic to write about something that I am doing, so I figured it would be fun to switch it up. As the author of one of the web’s busiest t-shirt blogs, Karl should know a thing or two about good t-shirt design. As he explains it:

The motivation behind doing my own line of shirts stems from the same motivation for writing this blog, to find and promote cool designs that are maybe a bit under the radar. That’s why the one of my lines is going to be called the Artist Series which will be based upon original licensed art and design from indie artists. The artist gets a cut of every sale for as long as we are printing the shirt.

The shirts are printed on American Apparel, with no word when the next one will come along.  While ordinarily I might say that it the Obama shirt is a little overdone right now, the novelty of Obama’s head on a pez dispenser overrules that concern. Plus, really he could use all the attention he can get right now. Check it out.

Now these shirts may be shamelessly pandering to the recently arrived post-college Brooklyn dwelling hipster lifestyle, but thats probably why I like them. Obviously the bike shirts win the most favor here, especially the few printed on organic cotton. Additionally, 10% of the “more bike lanes” shirt goes to support a bicycle non-profit here in NYC (sound familiar?). Anyway, clean simple designs make these shirts not too obnoxious, despite the models’ ridiculous haircuts. My only substantial complaint (and there always has to be one) is that I would really like to see one complete t-shirt line somewhere that doesn’t utilize a single bit of gold-foil typeface. Oh yeah, that and the “made in brooklyn” shirt is most certainly not sewn in Brooklyn. Go. Now.