When I went down to London in February to attend Margin I decided I was going to make a bit of a pilgrimage to Concrete Hermit, and since they were located pretty near to The Park and To Be Confirmed shows that I was going to attend I decided I’d be stupid not visit them after writing about Concrete Hermit so much in the past.
In hindsight, the gallery is actually quite easy to find, but because I had a lame printout from Google Maps to guide me it took about 30 minutes walking and stopping several people (most of whom seemed as lost as me) to find them when they’re only about 10 minutes brisk walk from Liverpool Street Station. Located on a fairly quiet street not far from the hustle and bustle of Brick Lane, a street that is famous for curry, art, clothes and graffiti, pretty much in that order. The Concrete Hermit gallery has the appearance of a regular shop, except with a lot less stuff in it. This is a conscious decision that has been made to separate the exhibition space from the sales area, which I think helps them to maintain the ambiance of a gallery in the front of the space when you walk in, you aren’t immediately confronted with items that you can buy, I think that’s important and helps you understand what the CH team want their gallery to be like.
Of course, you can buy things in the gallery as well. Almost everything that is available in their online shop is available in the gallery, and if it isn’t out I suspect that they’d be able to get it for you since, if I remember correctly, their storage space is either located in the basement of the gallery or somewhere very nearby. It was good to get hands on with their t-shirt offerings after recommending them so many time, and I wasn’t disappointed with the quality of their high-end tee offerings, soft tees and soft, vibrant prints are to be found in abundance on their racks, so I’m happy to keep recommending them. Whilst I don’t think it is possible to buy the original works that are on show in the exhibition space, it is usually possible to buy a print or poster from the same artist, and also a t-shirt which has been designed by the artist exclusively for their exhibition at the gallery.

Concrete Hermit

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Tags » concrete hermit • Exclusive • gallery • guide • HYAvisits • photos • tour

Fear not gentle readers, HYA has not turned into Hide Your Ass (now there’s an idea!), but I promised these guys that I’d write something about them even if I don’t have the first clue about the world of premium jeanswear. I met two of the people behind Trousers London at the pre-party before the main event at Margin and they they were great, very concerned about the two friends I took to the party who ‘over-extended’ themselves on delicious free cocktails from the bar. In short, being nice to me will get you a feature on HYA.
Trousers London was officially launched at Margin, though the brand was born in 2007 with the intention of creating a jeanswear label that stood out from other high-end offerings. Here’s how they describe themselves:

Trousers is an experimental, ambitious, future-focused jeans label inspired by London.

From unique designs and shapes, to small but important details, Trousers stands alone among the clones of the daily jeans parade. Trousers makes jeans for the genuine modern day gentlemen, for the man who loves the thrill of the new and is always at the forefront of the avant-garde.

We at Trousers believe in ecologically friendly materials and we care that our products are not born of exploitation. Our range is crafted with patience and skill in small batches, in our Italian factory using organic premium denim.

Like I said, I know basically nothing about the premium jeans market. I do know that their jeans looked cool, and they’re making all the right noises in terms of not wanting to destroy the planet which is refreshing to hear, and I think that it would be pretty hard for you to disagree that these are fairly unique designs, you certainly won’t find anything like them on the high street. So, I do give their range a thumbs up, but unfortunately my thumbs are of little value in this instance.

At the moment it isn’t actually possible to buy these jeans. Those who are interested in the limited edition garments (just 600 pairs in the first production run) will be available to register their interest in May when the Trousers web store opens, with the jeans getting to them in June or July. If you’re a bricks and mortar kind of person, the jeans will be available in a select few retails stores around the UK and Europe around August/September.

Trousers London

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Tags » Environmental • jeans • london • margin • margin2008 • trousers london

Andy: “Ummmm, why have you put those badges into takeaway cartons?”YCMIH: “One day we were making our onion-design badges and we noticed that they were… y’know, onion… badges…“(Queue bemused look from the devilishly handsome blogger)

Andy: “……..”

YCMIH: “Onion Bhajis!”

Andy: “Ahhhhh! Now I get it”

And with that, I was thoroughly smitten with the ladies behind You Can Make It Happen, a small Manchester-based company set up by Jo Finlay in 2003. There was a fantastic quirky-Britishness about them, their designs, and entire brand philosophy that was really endearing. The often doodle-like hand drawn illustration style is a staple of their (usually food-inspired) designs, something which goes hand-in-hand with the hand-printed, limited edition nature of all their pieces.

Fittingly, considering the food-theme that seems to run through their range, YCMIH are getting healthy and eating their greens. That rather strained metaphor (analogy?) means that they’re sourcing all their products from manufacturers that employ fair, ethically and environmentally conscious working practices.

They had quite a few products at Margin that I can’t spot on their typically whimsical, hand drawn website, such as a new ‘eat your greens’ range, and a guilt-free eco-bag, a product that is really big in the UK at the moment, so it might be a case of it taking a while for them to get to the site, but it’s entirely possible that they’ll have the latest stuff at Manchester’s Fashion Market every Saturday 10am-5pm on Tib Street (near Debenhams, if you know Manc. you’ll probably know where that is).

You Can Make It Happen

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Tags » food • manchester • margin • margin2008 • T-shirts • YCMIH

Just a month (and a week) after the event actually occurred, I’m finally treating you to some reports on brands that I found at Margin. As most of the vendors at Margin didn’t want photos being taken of their goods (and a few at The Park were pretty rude over the whole photo situation), and I can understand why, the clothes world can be pretty cut throat, I won’t be using any personally taken photos of the brands I met, but I think that I was able to get a much better insight into what all the brands were about, so there should be a bit more authority to these posts than my regular ‘hey, that looks cool’ offerings.


Terratag were the first brand I chatted too, so I thought it would be appropriate that I profiled them first. It’s hardly surprising that Terratag made a big impression on me, they love robots, perhaps even more than I do (they’re putting together a book with more than 200 robot t-shirts in it), and the way that their designs seamlessly mix British and Japanese pop culture really pushes my buttons (in a good way). They employ lots of strong images, often inspired by the extremely popular Gundam series, which helps to explain why Japan is one of their biggest sources of international orders. They also have no fear in using metallic inks, something that I’m happy to see. But to make it seem as if Terratag are robot obsesses is pretty unfair, their designs run a fairly wide gamut of subject matter, they like to dabble in graffiti style and vivid, neon colourways (some of which actually glow under UV light!) that are bound to get a lot of attention.

Overall, a very impressive line, who had a friendly guy working their booth that didn’t appear to mind answering my annoying newbie-journo questions.

Terratag links: Main Site/MySpace/Photos on Flickr

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Tags » Day Glo • graffiti • japan • Japanese • margin2008 • marginreports • robot • robots • street art • t-shirt • terratag • UV

I know it seems like every time I mention politics and t-shirts in the same sentence I’m disparaging to both the creators and the wearers, but I do think that there is a place in this world for tees that let people know what you think without the need to tell them. I guess my attitude to do with political tees is probably just the elitism that comes with studying politics for three years at University (I’ve read books, my opinion is infinitely more valid than yours!).

Retro Campaigns allays my uneasiness with political clothing by looking to the past, and since the past has past there’s no need to get worried about it (did I mention that my degree was in History too?). All the tees are based upon political campaigns from before I was even born, and they aren’t necessarily focused upon the most famous people in American history either (who the hell’s this Jimmy Carter guy?). All the American Apparel tees have been washed in a way to make the print look a bit aged, which fits in with the vintage aesthetic behind the brand. They aren’t too expensive either at $20 a pop.

Retro Campaigns

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Hidden Labels motto/slogan/tagline is “fashion is an addiction,” a sentiment that I’m sure quite a few readers would agree with. HL seems to have scouted around, found their favourite labels, and brought them together in a ‘kid in a candy store’ style, so I guess that if fashion is an addiction, Hidden Labels wants to be your dealer.

I didn’t put ‘cream of the crop’ in the title for no reason, the choice of labels on sale really is great. HYA favourite’s Chateau Roux, the robot-lovers of Me&Yu, the nailgun political sophistication of Spraygraphic, and the much-coveted designs of Imaginary Foundation are all represented, amongst other top quality labels. Also, you won’t find Imaginary Foundation on sale anywhere else in the UK, which must be a real coup for the Hidden Labels crew. It’s great to see a company in the UK trying to make it easier for us Brits to get hold of top quality imported merchandise, since it can still be pretty expensive for us to buy items from the US despite the weakness of the dollar at the moment, especially if we get charged import tax, so for Hidden Labels to take that concern away from the equation makes it a lot more likely that I’ll see people sporting these brands in the UK, rather than the usual high-street procession of tired slogans and numbers.

And, as a little treat, I’ve got a code for you that’ll get 10% off your order. Just input the code 8704 during the checkout process and the discount will be applied.

Hidden Labels

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I don’t know about you guys, but it was only a few weeks ago that I removed Torso’s blog feed from my Google Reader, there’d been no updates from them for months, but I held out hope that one of the blogs I enjoyed reading would come back after hiatus. And it is back, but not as a tee news blog, it’s back as what they themselves describe as ‘yet another t-shirt label’, and I like that kind of self-cynicism, they know they aren’t reinventing the wheel, they’re just trying to make great shirts. That’s an aim that seems to be being achieved at the moment, Matt, the guy skippering HMS Torso, has picked some of his favourite artists from his time within the industry and given them free reign to be creative by offering them a wide variety of printing options (up to 8 colours, special inks). Merchline are providing their storefront, so I would guess that if you made an order then you wouldn’t have that traditionally long wait for it to be shipped from Torso HQ in Australia.

Oh, and if you like their designs buy can’t stump up the cash for a tee, you ccan settle for a desktop wallpaper available from their freebies page.

www.torso.com.au

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Too hot for hoodies, am I right, folks?

Go Ape Shirts sprang to the attention of the ’sphere a few months ago when Dave Horowitz’s infamous Boo Boo Walker design struck a chord with Star Wars loving hipsters. Amazingly, Go Ape hasn’t been sued for copyright infringement by George Lucas and are back with their second series of shirts, complimenting the first series, which are still on sale (well, you wouldn’t stop printing a bestseller now, would you?).

The two new shirts are both nice (click on the thumbnail to see them in greater detail), with ‘Elliots’ New Friend’ being a great mashup of 80s pop-culture, but I wouldn’t want to make it seem as if Go Ape is only strong when it’s referencing movies, company owner Josh has brought together an impressive collection of artists, and he seems to be being very selective about what he’s selling.

The website is still fairly idiosyncratic at the moment, being kind of a blog/store hybrid, though there are some very nice implementations of Flash that it would be nice to see extending throughout the site. Josh has also said that he might order some hoodies when it starts to get a bit cooler (Go Ape is in Arizona though, so you may be waiting some time!), so keep an eye out for them in the future.

All shirts are screen printed on American Apparel and are a reasonable $18 + shipping and handling.

Go Ape Shirts

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Tags » American Apparel • dave horowitz • go ape shirts • profile

I usually wouldn’t talk about a tee-only company unless they’d sent me a tee (payola is alive and well at HYA), but I do have a social conscience as well, so when Christian from Alive Shirts e-mailed me to tell me about how Alive is trying to make sure those almost-extinct animals become a lot less almost-extinct, I was compelled to do my bit, after all, I’m not an ogre (raaaahhh, I’ll eat your bones!!!), oh, guess I am.

The design process at Alive is pretty clever, each tee has a threatened animal on it, such as the Javan rhino or Bonobo chimp, usually in a chunky cartoon style. Let’s hope that one day there won’t be animals left for them to make t-shirts out of! (I’ve just re-read that sentence, let’s be clear that I don’t mean that one day there’ll be no animals alive on the planet…)

It’s all printed on American Apparel stock, and payment is handled by Paypal.

Costiness=€26 (dans la Eurozone) €28 (international), both prices with shipping. URL

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Tags » alive shirts • brown • Charity • logo • t-shirt

I really can’t help myself from helping out girls, just yesterday the really hot girl from next door asked for a bin (trash) bag, and did I give her one (yep, I went there)? No, I gave her two, because if a girl smiles at me I will do anything.

Now Diane from Boppo Clothing (that’s her up there I think… on the left) didn’t ask me for a bin bag, or even for me to mention her tee designs, but she wrote such a nice e-mail telling me how awesome I am that a post was the least I could do. She doesn’t actually sell anything with sleeves, but the tees are damn fine and super cheap too, with prices around $10 before shipping and handling.

Reminder to all store owners out there, I’m not elitist in any way, point me towards your store and I will check it out, you can find my e-mail on the contact page.

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Tags » • boppo clothing • t-shirt