You all know that I’m a sucker for a gold foil design, it’s a weakness of mine, but at least I’m addicted to cool looking tees with shiny prints on them, instead of something like crack, because then I’d probably sell my computer to get another hit, you would stop being told about cool tees (and hoodies, per your requests), and I’d probably have a pretty horrible life…… so, gold foil, good thing!
Costiness=$34 Available from Christopher (also available in different colorways and for girls)
Over the past few years the iconic “Keep Calm And Carry On” design has made an extremely successful transition from cool war-time poster to cool irony-time t-shirt, inspiring many parodies and more than a few copycats. Now I’m
not a fancy big city lawyer, so I don’t know a thing about copyright, but I’m fairly sure that
Yes No Maybe were the first to release this design as a tee, and now they’re spinning it out
as it’s own site so that you won’t get all flustered trying to find it on their main site.
I do believe that the original was white text on a red tee, which is still really cool, but YNM have expanded on that and now offer the same design in numerous colourways, including gold foil on black (shown above, obviously) which I’m rather partial to. Americans will probably find the £19.91 price a little high, and personally I think that £19.39 would be a rather more appropriate price (and you shouldn’t need a history degree to know why).
Costiness=£19.91 Available from Keep Calm London
Okay, you can take this tee two ways. Is it just a funny, literal tee for those of us that have way too many shirts in our closets? Or is it a reference to DVNO by Justice? Either way, a damn cool tee… for people that have too many t-shirts and love gold print (hey, I’m the target demographic!).
Costiness=$34 Buy it at krudmart
![cassida3 480x360 Mergers & Acquisitions by Cassida [Review]](http://hideyourarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/cassida3-480x360.jpg "cassida3")
Off the bat, I think it’s important to mention what will probably be the biggest sticking point for most of you: the price. This t-shirt costs €105. Whether the economy was in the tank or not, that would be a pretty tough sell, but I do think that
Cassida are doing a lot more than some other premium t-shirt brands to help you justify dropping that cash on a tee.
![cassida2 480x640 Mergers & Acquisitions by Cassida [Review]](http://hideyourarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/cassida2-480x640.jpg "cassida2")
The metaphor is fairly obvious, businessmen are gladiators, and I’m sure that there’s a lot of people working on Wall Street in America and Docklands in England that would agree with such sentiment. To a degree I can just about see how that works, especially if you extend the metaphor to include what Michael Quester, the man behind Cassida who has also previously been a
winner at Design By Humans, wants to bring from the brand; reimagining the extravagance and opulence of the Roman empire in his first independent line of clothing. I guess that explains the rhinestones and foil then.
![cassida4 480x360 Mergers & Acquisitions by Cassida [Review]](http://hideyourarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/cassida4-480x360.jpg "cassida4")
There is some really interesting stuff going on with these Cassida tees, and I’m really surprised that there isn’t much mention of it on their site because there has clearly been a huge amount of effort put into producing a highly-customised tee of very high quality. Compared to a ‘normal’ t-shirt, almost every aspect of Cassida’s blanks has been changed in some way; there’s little cuts on the hem to create a vintage look, and it actually works, it doesn’t look like someone just got bored with a pair of scissors. There’s inside-out stitching all over the place, which adds to the interest, and I really like the quad-stitching (anyone care to enlighten me with a correct technical term?) around the neck.
The tees do run pretty small, but they feel really good, easily some of the best I’ve ever come across, and the printing is of a high-quality too, and that includes the oft-troublesome glitter/foil areas. The tees comes in a cardboard box that has the Cassida logo on it, which is a nice-touch and helps reinforce the luxury feel of the brand.
Cassida are clearly producing t-shirts of a very high standard, but it would be very hard for me to justify spending €105 on a single t-shirt, though having said that, judging by the shops I’ve browsed in St Tropez numerous times (but never bought anything), there is certainly a market for t-shirts around that price point, and people that are willing to buy them.
Costiness=€105 Buy the tee from Cassida
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