I forgot that I had to blog today (even though I picked out the hoodie this afternoon from my big list) and now its almost 3AM, so I am pretty much phoning this one in.

Our zip-up hoodie is another super-soft but super-durable creation from our wringer-washed 380-gram fleece category. The Topo is discharge screen printed across the front of this jacket for a soft hand and features front and back Western yokes — a totally unique attribute for any hoodie. Topo signature stripe zipper taping and a custom zip-pull rounds out the look.

Check out the lines printed on the top of the hood, and that logo, it’s some kind of a rodent with wings, pretty bizarre, and yet pretty cool at the same time.

Costiness=$92 URL

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Tags » animal • blue • hoodie • Mens • topo • wings

Ahhhh, political t-shirts, my favourite. If people have the ideas and knowledge to back up their wearing of a politically orientated shirt, then I’m totally cool with them, but otherwise, I declare open season on phonies, and yes, I am talking to you, Hollywood (I presume that at least one A-lister reads the blog). And I feel this after having just spent 3 years studying politics, so I hope you can understand my frustration with people that don’t seem to understand the issues.

Luckily for Ban T-shirts, they shan’t face my wrath, I think that they ‘get it’. Also, their designs are pretty freakin’ sweet, so I was very pleased when a mysterious figure from BT known to me only as ‘the Dude’ offered to send a tee my way. This morning I found a little USPS packet on the kitchen table (same size as when you get 1 tee from Threadless), which always surprises me, because how can such a small packet contain something that fits me?

Anywho, it can, and of course it feels nice because its American Apparel (the 2001 tee if I’m not mistaken), and the printing feels solid, though obviously I can’t comment upon durability (but I will stick my neck out and predict that it will last for quite a while, despite only being thin lines).

The barbed-wire outline of the United States on the ‘Fortress America‘ tee works really well in my opinion, with a powerful sentiment over the current immigration debate that is raging in the US (and in my country - the UK). Though funnily enough I can actually see this tee being worn by both the Left and the Right, seriously, what Minute Man wouldn’t want to wear this on border patrol?

Check out the rest of the Ban T-Shirts catalogue, because they’ve got a wide variety of shirts covering a lot of issues prominent in topical debates, as well as a few classics.

Costiness=$15.95 URL

Coming up sometime in the near future I’ll be posting an interview with ‘the Dude’ from Ban T-shirts, which should be an interesting read.

Two more pics after the jump
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Tags » • america • ban t-shirts • black • immigration • outline • review • Reviews • t-shirt

Ok, I know I seem to post about Backseat Kiss almost as much as Naive or Oddica, but if they keep kicking out awesome hoodies, I’m not really in a position to stop posting their super-cute model now, am I?

You all know that I like to see innovation in placement with my cotton goods, so when I saw a six-shooter holstered in the pocket I was immediately impressed, and the “official backseat kiss cowboy badge” looks pretty nice too, incorporating the robot logo into a classic icon, though if I were to be particularly pedantic I’d have to say that it was a sheriff’s badge, yes?

I’m sure that some of you might have some reservations wearing a hoodie that gives the appearance that you’re carrying some kind of weapon, especially since you apparently can’t wear certain items of clothing in parts of America now, but you know what, forget it, if you’ve got a cowboy/sheriff badge you deserve a screenprinted handgun!

Costiness=$39 (and it comes with a free tote bag as part of the ‘Back to School’ promotion!) URL

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Tags » backseat kiss • black • gun • guns • hoodie • hot model • Mens • position • sheriff • Womens

… because I always seem to be flaking on you!

There’s no (real) post tonight or tomorrow because I’m heading down to the Midlands for a wedding tomorrow and I’ve got to be up early tomorrow for the 170 mile drive.

But I promise I will have an absolute doozy of a hoodie for you on Monday, and there should be a hands-on review next week, and possibly even an interview, so whilst the weekend may be starting early at HYA, next week should be awesome.

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Tags » • Admin • sorry • wedding

I always feel a bit uneasy when I see clothing that has political meaning, especially if it is Che Guevara or something derivative of him, but sometimes these crazy activists and non-violent freedom fighters actually come up with designs that I quite like.

Bureaucrash have achieved just that, and whilst I may well have picked their least obviously political hoodie, I still think it’s a bit of a winner. The symbols are apparently an ancient expression of liberty, if you’re willing to believe them, the only thing I can promise is that it doesn’t say ‘super homosexual‘. The blurb says that it’s printed on a 50/50 blend, which is usually code for Fruit of the Loom.

Costiness=$29.76 URL

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Tags » blue • Bureaucrash • hoodie • liberty • symbols • text

Death… and taxes… Well, I guess you can add a third one to that list, the continuing proliferation of design-submission-competition tee stores. There are a lot of them out there, and if the previous post about Threadless taught us anything its that as a business model it can be pretty darned successful, so I’m not one of those guys that rolls his eyes when I see another company that seems similar to the big T, because lets face it, it’s a good way to make sure you have quality (and commercial quality) in your inventory.

Styletax treats its artists a bit different to most of its brethren, instead one getting one lump sum as a prize for having a winning design, it’s possible that you could be earning cash off your design for the forseeable future. Styletax will give you €1 for every tee that they sell with your design on it, I think they do runs of 100 tees, so if you design a good seller then you’d get up to €100, but reprints are always a possibility. You also get a couple of free tees if your design is a winner.

There’s quite a lot of cartoony, bold vectored designs in the shop at the moment, but my favourites are actually the more intricate and subtle designs (such as ‘Drawing a Daydream’ and ‘Night Owl’), so there’s a nice variety

All the tees are a reasonable €15, but when you consider that worldwide shipping is €2.50 for 1 tee, then you’ve got a very good deal.

And if you were wondering why there is no picture or page links, it’s because the whole site is Flash and I’m not really in the mood to take a screen capture and crop it at 2am.

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Tags » design competition • styletax

Very interesting article over at the Crowdsourcing blog about everyone’s favourite user-submission and rating tee shop, Threadless. As you would imagine, the article is about the economics of crowdsourcing and something called ‘long-tail’, which are a bit over my head (though it is fun to learn about the business behind the cotton), but there are some very interesting numbers in the article:

• They sell 60,000 t-shirts a month
• The estimated gross for 2006 is $18 million
• The user community amounts to about 350,000 people
• When they do a reprint, they reprint at least 1,200 of the design (and remember how fast Flowers in the Attic usually sells out)
• They’ve turned down offers from Target and Urban Outfitters and 99% of sales occur online.

I know it’s a subject a bit off the beaten track of HYA, but I’ve noticed a spate of articles recently about small and underground tee companies, and thought you might want to hear about one of the success stories.

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Tags » • info • reasearch • Threadless

Thank God for that, I was starting to run out of excuses for running a tee company!

If there was ever a tee design that was destined to be turned into a hoodie and be worn by record store owners across the world it was the Exploded Turntable, if I remember correctly, the artist actually takes apart items (such as the turntable) and draws based upon what he finds, how cool is that? I wonder if he knows that you ca usually find these things in manuals?

Whilst I do see the exploded turntable as being one of the best sellers, ‘Can’t beat’em Sell’em‘ and ‘Ghost Camera‘ are actually my favourites, I just like the cutesy design of the former, and the idea behind the latter.

The hoodies sell for $38, but if you use the coupon code ‘tell‘ (lowercase) then you will get $7 off your order.

In other oddica news, they’re going to be sending out wallet-sized ‘tell cards’ with every order, so that when someone asks you where you got that awesome tee (which happened to me twice this weekend, whilst wearing ‘A Fathom Farewell‘ from Threadless) instead of you telling them, then them forgetting, you can just give them a little card, and then when they next go to the ATM and thumb through their cards they’ll be like, “oh yeah, Oddica, that octopus on a plane was awesome, what clever marketing!”

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Tags » black • hoodie • music • oddica • troy paiva • turntable

Seibei seem like a really nice company to me, cute graphics, a regularly updated blog (which isn’t just filled with encouragement to buy Seibei clothing), they’re happy to link to their competitiors (and me, top o’ the list y’all!), they mow their lawn in a bunny suit (the grass stains must be a nightmare) and most importantly, they’ve got some great designs, like the infamously awesome Intramural Zombie Hunting League tee.

The shop at Seibei had been closed since the July 1qst, and after a number of setbacks David has finally managed to reopen the store at the weekend, all the tees are now printed on American Apparel, instead of the previously used Anvil brand, although I don’t think that the prices have gone up that much compared to how much more the tee stock costs. The tees have their own custom printed Seibei tag in them, which is cool since you don’t see that with too many small brands at the moment.

Most of the tees are $16, but if that isn’t a sweet enough deal for you, HYA has been set up with its very own coupon code, so when you make and order just put HIDEYOURARMS (all one word, not case sensitive) in the box on the shipping page, which is the first once you’re in the checkout, and you’ll get $4 off your order.

*I forgot to mention it earlier, but the coupon is valid until September 10th, so you have 19 days(ish depending on time zone) to pick up a bargain.*

• 3 Comments
Tags » costume • coupon code • seibei • zombie • zombies

This hoodie isn’t the kind of thing that I’d usually go for, fake vintage and a biker theme with trendy sewn on patches, but even I have to admit that it’s pretty cool.

And I wanted to do a recommendation from Revolve Clothing (just to avoid confusion, the hoodie brand is ‘Fresh’, Revolve is a store) since they’ve got a great range, admittedly it’s usually mainstream labels, and it ain’t exactly cheap (though there is a lot of sale items), but it still just ‘feels’ like a good store to buy from.

Costiness=$72 URL

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Tags » faded • fake • grey • revolve clothing • vintage