A brand that loves pandas? Has cute graphics? Splits its profits three ways (artist, charity, and themselves)? Makes up words like ‘pandafesto’? I think I might be in love!

Ok, maybe not love, but I am really impressed by the way that P is for Panda conduct themselves. Instead of giving an artist a lump sum for their efforts, they get paid on a per tee basis, a system that appeals to me, it feels as if it rewards excellence. They also let the artists decide how much the tee should be sold for, and in some cases, how many of the tee should be allowed to be sold. And they give money to charity, which I always support, and you probably won’t be surprised to hear that one of those charities is the World Wildlife Fund, who of course have a panda on their logo.

This is another in an increasingly long line of logo based tees that don’t annoy me, and whilst I realise that this could be because the logo itself.isn’t well-known to most of the planet, I also think it’s because of the way they’ve treated it. There’s no reverence to their brand in the design, it’s almost as if they’ve got a big rubber stamp, inked it up and whacked it down onto the tee. Although, obviously that isn’t how it was made, and I’m sure a lot more care went into this tee than it appears, but the casual-ness of the design is actually what makes it appeal to me.

Quality is impressive. American Apparel stock tee, so we all know what that means (well, if you’ve bought tees off the internet you do). The print feels good too, although I guess that since this is a vintage style tee, the quality of the print wouldn’t matter too much since the more it degrades the more vintage it looks, so it’ll be quite a few washes before this tee starts looking more vintage!

Costiness=$18 Link (several colours available on their site, though this isn’t actually one of them)

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I always thought it was ‘chequered’… I guess that this is just another time when my use of real English creates a mini conflict in my mind considering that the vast majority of people reading this are American.

Anywho, the design is what’s important, and I really like this. It has the look of something that I imagine a guitarist would wear on down-time during a tour (clearly, I have a lot of time to imagine things), I guess that’s because I’ve been conditioned to believe that any kind of chequered pattern suggests punk.

One thing that’s confusing me a bit is the spiffy looking jet on the left breast. At first I thought it was just sewn on the top of the black hoodie, but then their description confused me, “On the left side of the chest there is a stitched plane logo that has been then cut out.” So, maybe the chequering of the plane is actually from the inner lining of the hoodie? I think that’s actually cooler on a conceptional basis than an appliqué stitched onto the hoodie, but either way it looks good.

Costiness=$36 Link

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I’m watching Chuck at the moment (you know, the show with the least nerdy nerd guy ever), and I found this in my bookmarks. It’s a pretty good design, but I would have liked to see them go for more of a crest style on the text/plaque area, since there seems to be a bit of a mismatch there, still, I love everything above the plaque.

Costiness=$18 Link

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