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

Great tee, great tee, I’m really loving the colourway, Lichtenstein-esque style, and use of negative space, which I guess is pretty much every aspect of this tee. I’m sure that a lot of you think that I just post a Karmaloop product every day because I can slap my rep code onto the link on there (I’ve actually just got lots and lots of designs from there that I’ve bookmarked to post), but I’d like to think that its tees like this one that show the quality of their inventory rather than the fact that I might get 5% out of a sale.Costiness=$23 Link

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Tags » graffiti • Karmaloop • pink • seventh letter • spray can • t-shirt • white

I often feel then when I’m writing this blog I just say whats great about a product, and that’s usually because I like things because they’re just generally awesome, and whilst I do like today’s choice, I do have a couple of gripes with it.

1. I like the design, but it just feels a bit poorly executed, the squaring off of the print in the top corner just feels as if this was printed in the mid-90s (did I just make a ‘that is so last year’-esque comment, wow, I really am a fashion writer!). If you’re going to have lines that go out like clouds, finish off the design like a cloud, it adds so much value to a design when we see the whole thing rather than a framed off portion.

2. The zip. I’m sure I could say this about a lot of zip-up hoodies, but the colour of the zip is important, in this case it splits the design far too much, if it was a subtle black then the continuation of the print would be much more effective.

Still, I do like it, and I like how Soul Life have given a back story about the artist, it makes me feel more indie.

Costiness=£35 (down from £59.50) and is only available in XL.

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Tags » black • graffiti • hoodie • Soul life