I don’t want to alarm you or anything, but the three words “cool wrestling t-shirts” can in fact be used in the same sentence without the world exploding. Seriously, it’s not a contradiction in terms. Admittedly, professional wrestling hasn’t been cool since about 1997, but that almost doesn’t matter. I haven’t watched wrestling since I was 16 – these things called girls got in the way – but I can still appreciate the smart, snarky designs which are a mile away from the stuff the WWE (apparently the WWF had to change their name after the World Wildlife Fund sued them) produce.

Barber Shop Window has a simple motto: “to create shirts that wrestling fans enjoy, would want to own, and wouldn’t be embarassed to wear to the bar.” I’d argue they go further. These things can be worn by non- or lapsed wrestling fans like me.

They take an increasingly standard model of selling. Shirts are available for a limited time period and on a short print run, before being taken off-sale. Any leftovers (usually in odd sizes) can be picked up for about $25 (first-run shirts usually run $20). The shirt stock’s good, the printing lasts and is clear. I’m currently wearing the ‘Monsoon-Heenan 2012′ shirt pictured above; it combines my favourite commentary team from my formative years with my love of American politics (fuelled by The West Wing). I wish I had the Fuji Vice t-shirt, based on this…unique vignette from the 1980s. If you’re nerdy like me, the chances are you’ll find something here for you.

The awesomely named Hunter Franks got in touch to let me know about his new t-shirt brand, Adhesion Clothing. Here’s what he has to say about it:

In physics, adhesion is the tendency of certain dissimilar molecules to cling together due to attractive forces. My aesthetic commonly takes seemingly different concepts and fuses them together to breed a new meaning that provokes thought from the viewer. This sparked the platform that Adhesion Clothing was formed upon: to revolutionize meaning, ignite thought, and inspire creativity. Adhesion Clothing strives to create unique and attractive apparel that creates a narrative and stands out in a crowd.

It’s quite hard to tell what to make a of a new t-shirt startup that has only t-shirts available, even if those two shirts are pretty cool and they’re reasonable at $25 a piece. Hopefully Hunter will get in touch when he releases more because I’d like to see what direction Adhesion goes in.

*UPDATE* Adhesion got in touch to say that if you use the coupon code HYA2012 you’ll get 10% off your order.

You know those times when I have to make an embarrassing admission, and people respond by saying “how are you 27 years old and this has passed you by?” Well, this is another of those times, because I don#t think that I’ve ever eaten red licorice before. I’m aware of it, it’s just never appealed to me enough when I’ve been buying sweets to pick it up over other items. That might be because when I was younger we didn’t eat a lot of chocolate and sugar, at least not pre-packaged sugary snacks, so when the opportunity arose I wouldn’t have taken the risky option of something new and stuck with something I knew I’d like.

Clearly though, someone loves red licorice, because they’ve created and entire clothing line based on the sweet rope. Redlicorice currently got three different designs in the store (on guys and girls blanks, and in multiple colourways) and whilst I can’t appreciate the subject fully I can enjoy the bold colour schemes that they’ve gone for. They aren’t too flashy but they work really well together and make for a fun colour palette. At $28.99 for a shirt they’re probably on the upper limit for what’s acceptable in to the indie industry for a brand just starting out, but that price isn’t so high that it will put someone off making a purchase if they really like the shirts.

Remuse Collective is an artist collective that try to dive a bit deeper with their art. Putting thought and ideas behind their designs rather then just throwing together pictures on a shirt. Printed on Anvil 980 or American Apparel for a modern fashion fit. Shirts are $20, I’d suggest picking one up.

T-bar is an Australian t-shirt label that I’ve been watching for awhile now as their t-shirts seem to be quality stuff. Founded in 2006, their colourful selection of graphic tees is designed by a host of talented Australian and international illustrators. The blanks they print on are soft, comfortable and lightweight, as all good t-shirts should be. In addition to the regular crew neck tees for guys and girls, they also sell some designs on V-neck tees only, which I think is pretty smart as some designs just work better on V-necks.

You may be interested to know that T-bar currently has 23 stores across Australia and one in Singapore, so if you happen to live in or are headed to these countries, you may want to check them out as they seem to have a wider range of tees in-store. T-bar has also launched a new range of basics which is a collection that they’ll be building on.

Their tees are currently priced at one for AUD$40, two for AUD$69 and three for AUD$99. They’ll throw in free shipping if you get 3 or more tees too.

Since Treacle Clothing started printing graffiti tshirts  in early 2010 they have released 14 t-shirts so far, as well as a couple of tote bags, sweaters and prints. There are a few things about Treacle Clothing that make them unique, the attention to detail throughout the range and its packaging to the hand finishing of the garments. Treacle print on carbon neutral, ethically sourced cotton garments that are hand finished and printed in the UK, here are a couple of my faves, I think we will be seeing a lot more from Treacle this year!

I am really hoping that Loviu manage to find a niche and stay on the scene in the long-term (‘tee a day’ sites are a brutal part of the tee world). They sent over these cool photos of their production process, I love seeing stuff like this because it’s still something of a mystery to me, and hopefully you’ll like taking a look too.

It’s pretty rare that a t-shirt company stops me in my tracks (whatever that means, I sit at a desk about 10 hours a day), but Limerence did just that when I saw their designs. When I said a few posts back that I thought 2011 would be the year of the photo tee I was kind of joking, but just a few hours later my prophecy is coming true!*

Sure, they’ve got four shirts in the store, one is a logo shirt (a nice logo shirt, but still), and one is the name set onto photos which is cool though still a bit logo-y for my liking, but the other two are utterly stunning, I’m almost considering bookmarking the Addictive Love for a ‘best of 2011′ post that I will inevitably ‘forget’ to write next December when the lure of mince pies and mulled wine becomes too great. The shirts themselves are produced in the US, but I’m not sure what brand of blank is being used, I do know that the inks are eco-friendly though, so this shirt doesn’t melt the ice caps quite as much as many others do.

For a bit of background, Limerence is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is also known as where all those Amish folks come from. Doug, the guy behind Limerence sources all the material for his designs from vintage managzines like a 1950s copy of LIFE or his parents yearbooks, or newspaper clipping, basically anything from before 1974. I’m not really sure where that puts him in terms of copyright law and I’m not going to pretend to have any idea about that kind of thing, but hopefully the images have been manipulated enough for them to be okay in the eyes of the law. It’s funny how willing people are to accept possible copyright infringement when cool tees are involved!

Their website could do with a bit more to it though, it’s just a Big Cartel storefront at the moment. There’s not really anything wrong with that, but they’ve clearly done a photoshoot, and Doug can clearly write judging by the e-mail he sent me, so why not pad out the site a bit more?

*2011 will also be the year of me getting a Ferrari and penthouse apartment in New York, in that case.

It’s hard to know how to feel when a new daily t-shirt site (in the mould of TeeFury) comes onto the scene, especially when it comes to someone like the fabulously named Loviu.

On the one-hand, daily t-shirt sites have come and gone a lot recently, it’s very hard for them to reach the amount of daily sales needed to make their business viable, especially when there are already big players in the market like Shirt.Woot and TeeFury offering a shirt for about the same price as lunch. It’s also hard to make sure you keep up the level of quality when it comes to your designs, and that means having a lot of designers in your community or buying a lot of tee designs. There’s a lot for them to juggle and they still have to make a lot of sales every day. In short, it’s very hard work and there’s not a lot of space left in the niche.

But on the other hand… Loviu have a very cool name, a well designed website, they claim to be the only EU-based daily tee site (and I have every reason to believe them) and have their site translated into multiple European languages, they’re selling some cool looking designs (which is possibly aided by their opening prize treasure chest being worth €5,000), and they have some good stuff in the voting section too (though some of it should probably be moderated out of there to keep the quality up). Also, possibly to alleviate the pressure of being a daily tee site, they’re offering a weekly tee as well, which I like as an option since that means I might actually talk about them more often. Daily tees cost €12, and the weekly tee costs €18.

There are a lot of positive things going on with Loviu, but of course you can say that about a lot of new sites, only time will tell whether they can gain a big enough following to be sustainable and turn into a good source of tees for us Europeans.

Bananas Tees is a new t-shirt label on the block described by themselves as “fun, cool and relentlessly positive graphic tees for the unpretentious”. The range is the brain-child of illustrator and t-shirt fanatic Dale Edwin Murray, who having designed tees for countless clothing labels and bands, and won at almost every t-shirt competition site around, decided it was time to build something for himself. All of the designs have a friendly, accessible vibe but are stylish and stylised at the same time. If you’re wondering where the bananas logo comes from, it is adapted from his online ‘bananaman’ alter ego. The tees are all £15 and shipping in the UK is £1.95 and £7.50 abroad.

To celebrate the launch of Bananas Tees, they are giving away one of each of the new range to someone picked at random from their newsletter subscribers. You’ve got 4 weeks to sign-up before the winner is announced but why wait that long? Do it now! Click here for more info and to sign up.

Check out the rest of the range at Banana Tees

[Andy: It's hardly surprising that Dale has come out with a strong range of tees, the man has talent!]

This post was submitted by bananastees.