I’m still pretty amazed that people will camp out on the street to get limited edition Johnny Cupcakes stuff, even though these three tees are pretty awesome, I love t-shirts, but at the site of a queue I would have probably gone and got a donut and decided to sit it out in a cafe. I think the people at the LA store probably had the better deal, what’s the weather like in Boston at this time of year?

There are a few that were saved for online orders (and they might even be gone by now), but you can’t get them through the store, you need to e-mail your order (and possibly an offer of a bribe) to monster@johnnycupcakes.com.

Johnny Cupcakes [via Highsnobiety]

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Tags » Bricks & Mortar • halloween • johnny cupcakes • limtied edition • T-shirts

RedBubble, who’re a print on demand company that have a lot of great artists uploading designs there, have teamed up with one of my favourite London clothes shops, Demo, to put some tee designs from their site into Demo’s excellent store.

Click through for all the details.
(more…)

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Tags » Bricks & Mortar • Competitions • demo • design competition • london • redbubble

Here’s a couple of events going down in the LA (yeah, I know, they get all the cool stuff) and Boston wings of the Johnny Cupcakes Empire. The best part about these release parties? Johnny Cupcakes will actually be giving out cupcakes for a change!

There’s Something In The Cupcake Mix Series 3

With the recent store opening of Johnny Cupcakes Los Angeles, hundreds of die hard fans flew in from all around the country to sleep on the street of Melrose Ave, awaiting for the grand opening of this coveted brand. Johnny Cupcakes flagship store in Boston is used to this type of excitement from fans.

There’s Something In The Cupcake Mix is a yearly Halloween t-shirt release party. Every year, Johnny Cupcakes releases a series of 4 limited, exclusive, monster-related shirts that sell out quick! This year, they should sell out even quicker. Every shirt is numbered up to 150 — but since we’re splitting them between both shops (Boston + LA) — there will only be 75 shirts of each of the 4 designs. Once they are gone, they are gone forever. All shirts are packaged in cupcake mix boxes, with hidden monster trivia pertaining to each of the monsters, a scratch and sniff sticker on top, as well as sprinkles that you have to dust off of your boxed t-shirt.

Doors don’t open until 9pm, but we suggest you getting there early. Feel free to come days in advance to wait in line with other fans. This year, we’re having all of our customers wear their best costumes to the release. We’re giving out free shirts to the first 100 customers. We’ll also be giving out real cupcakes and other treats throughout the evening. Photos and videos of the events will be posted on JohnnyCupcakes.com.

Doors open at 9pm
Wear your best costume!
Very limited - will sellout that night!

Friday October 17, 2008
279 Newbury St
Boston MA 02116

Saturday October 18, 2008
7959 Melrose Ave
Los Angeles CA 90046

From what I’ve been told, the lines will have already started forming for this (crazy!), but maybe if you run down now then you’ll be close enough in line to actually pick up one or two of the limited edition tees.

Johnny Cupcakes

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Tags » boston • Bricks & Mortar • halloween • johnny cupcakes • LA • release • release party • T-shirts

I forgot to mention this when it happened, but a little while back Dadawan (who I’ve mentioned quite a lot), and Mad Turnip (who I haven’t, but they share a retail shop in Paris) have joined forces and rebranded themselves as NUKOD, and are now operating out of a Big Cartel-powered webstore, which is a bit more browsing friendly then the old Dadawan store.

I can’t be entirely sure, but I think that they are the ones who have released the tees above, that I think are based upon photos of musicians (Iggy Pop, PJ Harvey, Stupefilp and my band of this year and last, Justice) by a French photographer that goes by the name of Natydred.

Find the tees at Nukod. Pour homme et pour femme.

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Tags » Bricks & Mortar • dadawan • Iggy Pop • Justice • mad turnip • music • natydred • nukod • photo • phototees • PJ Harvey • Stupeflip • T-shirts • white

I’m afraid that I dropped the ball a bit with this one, although since it only seemed to become news on the day of the event then I blame the rest of the clothing blog world for not picking up on this earlier, shame on you, internet!

Here’s what went down, last Saturday, on the last day for voter registration in Nevada, UNDFTD held an in-store voter registration session to try and encourage as many people as possible to get politically engaged. All of the people that registered in the UNDFTD store were given the tee shown above (by t-shirt design God Geoff McFetridge) as a gift. I don’t know how I feel about people essentially being bribed to register to vote (although I guess that just registering doesn’t actually mean that these people will actually cast a ballot), but I do have to applaud UNDFTD for doing their bit and getting involved with the election.

UNDFTD : Geoff McFetridge : [via Hypebeast]

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Tags » barack obama • Bricks & Mortar • Geoff McFetridge • Las Vegas • political • T-shirts • UNDFTD • white

Johnny Cupcakes LA shoppe: Webisode #4 from Johnny Cupcakes on Vimeo.

Here’s a video which shows off the cult of Johnny Cupcakes. Its a load of interviews with fans (and JC’s parents) from the day when the LA store opened, and I really enjoyed watching it, not just because I got to see the insides of the crazy store, but also because it was genuinely heartwarming to see how far these people would go to support one of their design heroes.

Johnny Cupcakes

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Tags » Bricks & Mortar • fans • johnny cupcakes • LA • Los Angeles • T-shirts • video

You’d think I’d be pretty skeptical of an exhibition where the only art on display is t-shirts with stains on them, but I guess that two and a half years of writing about t-shirts has changed my perspective on what art is.

Just so we’re clear, these aren’t necessarily ink stains either, some of the ‘inks’ used are made from henna, wheat grass, fish guts, and delicious ice lollies. Dirty Laundry invited artists to stain t-shirts with a medium of their choice to be exhibited in the Nuuanu Gallery in Honolulu, Hawaii. The idea behind it is to make you question whether its possible to actually ruin a t-shirt, someone spills wine on your tee? Pour more wine on it! It’s not a ruined t-shirt, its art!

The exhibition runs from now until September 20th.

Dirty Laundry

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Tags » art • Bricks & Mortar • but is it art • dirty laundry • exhibition • hawaii • honolulu • t-shirt

When I was down in London recently I was doing some shopping and naturally I wanted to see what the capital had to offer in terms of t-shirts. I’d done a little research before my trip, and found a few cool places, but I couldn’t find exactly what I was after. I figured that if I’m searching for that kind of info on the internet, then other people probably are too, so I thought it might be a good idea to make a list of clothing stores in London.

Upper Playground

Address: 31 Kingly Street, London, W1 (Google Maps Link)
Upper Playground have six retail stores, five of them are on the West Coast of the U.S., and luckily for us, one of them is in London.

Demo

Address: 19 Fouberts Place, W1F 7PZ (Google Maps Link)
If you’re going to Upper Playground, you may as well pop around the corner and head down Fouberts Place, where you’ll find Demo. It’s a fairly small shop, but it’s a veritable aladdin’s cave of top notch streetwear. Demo also happens to be the only place in the UK where I’ve seen Imaginary Foundation on sale, so its well worth a vist. Oh, and they have XLarge too.

Super Superficial

Address: 17 Fouberts Place, W1F 7QD and Kingly Court
I don’t know why Super Superficial’s only retail shops are within a couple of minutes walk of each other, but as long as they keep producing such great designs and offering Graniph-style discounts for buying more than one tee then I’ll be paying them a visit. If you want to pick between the two, I’d pick the Kingly Court shop, it feels a little larger, and I like the way they’ve fitted it out, but I assume they both offer the same range of designs.

Howies

Address: 42 Carnaby Street, W1F 7DY (Google Maps Link)
Howies are a Welsh brand (who are astoundingly frank and open in their ‘about us‘ section) that produce really cool, simple tee designs. They started out life as a skate/bike brand, so you see a lot of those themes running through the shirts. Oh, and they’re eco-friendly too!

Chateau Roux

[Picture credit: Super Indellible]
Address: 17 Newburgh Street, W1F 7RZ (Google Maps Link)
Chateau Roux are a pretty young brand (launched May 2006), but they’ve managed to get pretty big, pretty fast, and opening their first store earlier this year is strong testament to that. I wonder what kind of packaging they use when you buy a tee there, because when you get one in the post its a pretty special occasion.

Lazy Oaf

Address: Kingly Court (Google Maps Link)
Lazy Oaf had a face-lift recently, and boy does it look cool. The LO shop sells all kinds of things, clothing, jewelry, and stationary to name a few, all of which have sprung from the creative mind of Gemma Shiel.

Terratag

Address: 188 Brick Lane, E1 6SA (Google Maps Link)
We’re moving away from the Carnaby area now, and heading to the land of Terratag, the guys who are all about Gundam, Graff, and Girls. They have a flagship store on Brick Lane (though they are stocked in a number of other locations across London and the rest of the UK) that shows off both their clothing lines and printed art.

Your Eyes Lie

[Can't find a picture of the store, sorry guys]
Address: Unit 6b, Camden Lock, NW1 8AL (Google Maps Link)
Your Eyes Lie is a brand run by a British and Thai designer that make some pretty darned awesome black and white tees, though they have started branching into the world of colours.

Concrete Hermit

[more pictures here]
Address: 5a Club Row, London, E1 6JX (Google Maps Link)
Just a stone’s throw from Brick Lane, Concrete Hermit have a brilliant gallery/store that is well worth a visit. I’ve done a full review of the store that can be found here, but the short version is that they sell art and tees done by the artists that they feature in the gallery.

Magma

[Picture credit: northerncontinent]
Address: 8 Earlham Street, WC2H 9RY (Google Maps Link) & 117 Clerkenwell Road, EC1R 5BY (Google Maps Link)
Technically, Magma is actually a design bookstore, but considering they sell some 2k by Gingham tees I think I can shoehorn one of my favourite London stores into this list. I can almost guarantee that if I ever enter this store I’ll be walking out with a red plastic bag that has T magazine (or something else achingly cool) in it.

Hideout

Address: 7 Upper James Street, W1F 9DF (Google Maps Link)
Hideout deals with higher-end streetwear labels such as Supreme, Billionaire Boys Club, and Neighborhood, so expect to leave this store with a far lighter wallet than you went in with.

Slam City Skates

Address: 16 Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9DP (Google Maps Link)
As you’d imagine from the name, Slam City Skates is heaven for skaters, but a lot of their clothing is friendly to those of us that have the balance of a top-heavy pin stood on a piece of rope between the Grand Canyon in a high-wind (… I can’t skate).

I’m sure that I’m missing loads of great stores off, but since I don’t go to London all that much I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to go exploring, so if you know of a shop that should be on this list when I’m next down in the big smoke then leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list (after a thorough vetting process of me deciding whether its cool or not).

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Tags » Bricks & Mortar • bricks and mortar • cool • guide • list • Lists • london • retail • shopping • shops • stores • T-shirts