One week in and I already messed up on my T-Shirt Tuesday series. I have a good excuse though, my cat, Oliver, chewed up the power cable to my MacBookPro and I didn’t have my computer for a few days. It cost $72 at the Apple store, including the student discount, to replace it, in addition to the funeral costs related to Oliver’s untimely demise.
In t-shirt news this week comes an excellent selection from Threadless, including a new must-have for me called T-Minus, and also some long-awaited reprints from Design By Humans, including one I missed out on called Controlled Chaos. I discovered a great source for typographic tees called Snakes and Suits, which is definitely worth a look. Also, Barack Obama’s campaign is holding a t-shirt design contest that should yield some awesome results considering an already awesome selection of fan-created tees (1, 2, 3).
A close up of "Refraction"
This week’s feature shirt from my closet is “Refraction” from Design by Humans.
"Refraction" from the front.
It is funny that five to seven years ago (when I was a teen and I cared how others thought of me) you were “gay” if you (as a guy) wore any colors other than black, red, or gray. The dominant fashions of the late 90’s and early 2000’s except for the “prep” style all followed this rule, but none more stringently than the “skate” style. With the skate style now melded into the more general “west coast” style, blacks, reds, and grays, are still around, but often as the base shirt for a design full of color. Bright Pinks, Purples, Blues, Greens, Yellows, and every other color imaginable have emerged, and people my age and younger now can wear whatever they want and not have their sexuality brought into question. As a person who sees color as expressive, and as a person who is very loud, passionate, and expressive himself, this is a good thing for me. I credit the mid 2000’s “Real Men Wear Pink” fad (which I avoided with a ten foot pole) as the opening that made it okay for us guys to express ourselves.
That said, my selection of “loud” designs is still limited, perhaps for more subconscious reasons than not. But when it comes to loud designs in my collection, not one beats “Refraction”.
It looks great on me.
When I first saw this design on DBH, I thought of the classic Pink Floyd Album cover like it. The beam of white light begins around the back of the shirt and hits a prism on the lower left side, exploding into swaths of brilliant colors. The brilliant design is pleasing to the eye and exciting, and makes a statement when worn. I picked this shirt up for $14 during a sale, but at $19 this shirt is still worth every penny.
This was my first shirt from DBH and I’ll warn you, the inks on this one don’t hold up as well as store-bought and Threadless tees. I have begun washing this shirt in dark-colors-only loads on a gentle cycle to maintain the quality. But even a little worn out, “Refraction” is still loud and proud and easily one of my favorite shirts in my collection.
I have already shot the pictures for next week’s selection, in hopes of having T-Shirt Tuesday posted Monday night. Until then…