With the shopping frenzy of the holidays just behind us we could think of a better time to post up Material Bitch - a mouthy and irreverent brand with a handful of attention getting women’s tees and tanks. From Fucking Fabulous (shown below) to the medieval logo tee Material Bitch’s attitude comes through loud and clear. The tees (and one tracksuit) are available online, and also in a handful of boutique clothing stores in Arizona.
Here’s some cool stuff from a UK shop called Love & Tug. Inspired by the likes of Lohan, Doherty and Moss the tees feature the likenesses of today’s popular icons. And of course if you’re going to dive into the world of celebrity you’ve got to have at least one shirt about rehab. Nice spin on the classic Milton Glaser.
I’ve been wanting to a ‘best of’ category for site designs, I just haven’t gotten around to it. When I do, The Affair is hitting the top of the list. I give a lot of ‘passes’ to mediorce t-shirt site designs, I love to see the entrepreneurial spirit in action and sometimes that means a so-so site with great shirts. But every once in a while a shop get’s it all right.
The Affair’s site is nothing short of beautiful. Simple, clean, usable and intuitive. Go ahead an grab onto a t-shirt model and spin him around for a 360 degree view of the tee. Sweet. And you know what, they design shirts as good as they do web sites.
The Affiar is made up of two Aussies who’ve set up shop in London’s east end. Shirts are American Apparel and limited to editions of 200. The only down side is that they only have two tees available right now - Miniluv and Muslim Jesus. Hopefully this is just ths start of things to come. Nice work guys.
www.the-affair.com
We’re seeing more and more of a trend toward very limited run, ‘limited edition’ tees. With a saturated market of people running around wearing exactly the same Hollister or American Eagle shirts smaller shopkeepers are levaraging limited runs, and no re-prints, to help sell unique products.
Endangeredwear.com is one such shop, producing tees with limited print runs. They’ve got a good looking stuff. And they’ve put a good spin on their inventory scarcity by creating a members only section where fans can preview new shirts. They also publish inventory levels as an ‘extinction level’.
Endangeredwear is also producing special editions of tees to help benefit to Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Nice charity work guys.
PrettyHammer.com dropped me a note last week to give them a look. They’ve got some cool stuff. All of it has a real hand drawn quality to it I like. The Nebuchadenezzar shirt is posted here. I also dig the Blowin’ in the Wind.¬† Give these guys a look.
Also noteworthy is a tee they’ve got upcoming that will generate money for a Save Darfu charity.¬† Nice work.
If you haven’t run across True Love & False Idols yet (TLFI for those in the know) you might need your vision checked. These guys are everywhere these days. From Hollywood’s beautiful to MMA’s bloody, it’s hard not to catch someone sporting TLFI garb. And for good reason - they’ve got cool stuff.
Big graphic prints. Front, back - everywhere. It’s a super-textural, multi-layered, organic explosion of design. Our sample tee’s a great example. The back also has silver layered over the print as well. It’s a subtle touch that adds nice dimension. The shirt is nice and soft and sized just a bit more generously than the currently popular vintage reissues - which tends to run small. Great fit.
One of favorite shops, Teetonic.com, has a series of new shirts design for the Six Cities design festival. For those unfamiliar with Teetonic they’re a design competition style shop where users can submit shirt designs and vote for their favorites. It’s a cool concept that produces a lot of great work. And even cooler when you hear that design heavy-weights like Stefan Sagmeister are contributing work. Additional contributors to TeeTonic’s new Signature Series are: Wayne Hemingway, Timorous Beasties, Zandra Rhodes, Peter Saville and d8. Seriously some of the most original work around. Check em out and shop quick, the Six Cities tees aren’t likely to last long!
Hands down, one of my favorite shops is the The Ryde. I grew up in SoCal and spent more than my fair share of time hangin in HB. The hand-drawn surf-styled tees of The Ryde couldn’t capture it any better. Couple picks for this post are the Foam T-Shirt - love the Gray on Black. And a bit of a variation on the riding theme - the Moto Tee. It’s got a cool graphite hand drawn look to it, even though it’s photo. Check em out at TheRyde.com
I’ve think found my latest favorite shop. The Ryde, out of Laguna Beach, CA. As you can imagine anybody calling SoCal home is likely to be influenced by the beach scene. The Ryde has some surf themed stuff with a nice feel. Plus a number of very funny one liner style tees. And they do a great job with both. I’ve picked a couple of favorites here, The Pirate shirt and the Wheat Girls wave graphic. I’ve got one of the black pirate ship shirts myself and I love the subtly of¬† gray on black. Great print job and soft as can be.
