Every so often I get reminded by people just how much water and chemicals it takes to make a t-shirt, I’m pretty sure that they’re just jealous because my t-shirt collection is so awesome, but they are making a good point about how I’m destroying the planet by having tees in my closet that only get worn every few months.

I know I’m being flippant in the above paragraph, but seriously,
Continental Clothing are attempting to do their part in the global war on climate change with their new Earth Positive range. Over the past couple of years Continental have been trying to make the company more environmentally friendly, they’ve managed to reduce the carbon emissions of the entire production and shipping process for a basic white tee (size large) by a massive 89% to just 671 grams. It should be noted that this isn’t done by carbon offsetting, they’ve physically reduced the amount of gases that are being emitted from production, in part by only using green energy suppliers that use wind and solar power, using biodegradable packaging, no airfreighting, . This particular tee is also 100% organic (are you surprised?), as certified by the Soil Association, and produced under the Global Organic Textile Standard from Indian Cotton.

These steps have led to the Carbon Trust (a UK governmental organisation) asking for Continental Clothing to serve as a case study for the clothing industry so that others can benefit from their research and development, so they’ve clearly done some impressive work here improving their products.

Its quite hard to review a t-shirt like this, because even though you know it is much better for the environment, it still just feels like a normal (albeit high-quality) t-shirt. Obivously, that’s a good thing, if a t-shirt sucks, people probably wouldn’t buy it just because it wasn’t bad for the environment, so creating something that is either better than the original, or of equal quality whilst resulting in about a tenth of the emissions is a great step for them to make. I had noticed Continental Clothing becoming popular with more and more brands (including perennial HYA supporter Turtlehead) over the past few months, and I would imagine that a tee like this would be popular with people that usually look towards American Apparel when they’re picking a stock tee to print their tees on.I can’t find any information about pricing in the literature, or on the websites, but I would imagine that it would be pretty comparable to most similar offerings from other organic and ethical producers.

You can see the whole range (more than just t-shirts) at the dedicated Earth Positive Online site, and there’s also some info on the range and everything else CC at the main Continental Clothing site.

Yes, I managed to take extra pictures of a blank shirt.

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Tags » continental clothing • eco • Environmental • green • review • Reviews • T-shirts

It’s been an incredibly long time since we last took a look at Lenko, and thankfully they’re packing a catalogue filled with cool, if slightly bizarre designs. Unfortunately their pics are a bit small so its pretty hard to make out the details, but I think we can get the gist of it.

The text reads “Have you noticed the squirrels are stocking up on canned goods?” I haven’t, around more area I have spotted a lot more of the damned grey squirrels and a lot less of the native red squirrels, but that’s probably beside the point… probably.

Costiness=AU$69 Link

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Tags » Australia • funny • green • hoodie • squirrel • Womens

I wouldn’t usually mention a t-shirt that has sold out (especially as the last post was something that didn’t have a ‘buy’ link), but I spotted this on in my bookmarks and I’m really annoyed that I didn’t mention it to you before. In my defence, on the French blog post about it (yep, I even subscribe to the blog I can barely read) a couple of months ago they didn’t provide a link to the sale page, so I guess I was probably waiting for a shop link to come up before posting it, and then just forgot entirely. Hopefully something that looks this good will get reprinted at some point, and I think that the print might actually glow in the dark, which I can only imagine would be utterly incredible.Costiness=€11 (if it were in stock) Atlantis by Pagan for LaFraise

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Tags » American Apparel • city • France • green • hot model • jellyfish • lafraise • ocean • Pagan • sea • T-shirts

HYAs latest advertiser, Social T, sent a couple of tees over recently, which is great because it gave me a chance to make sure that I was still advertising a quality product, because I want you guys to trust the people that I let advertise on this site. I think it says a lot about Social T that even though they’ve already sent me a sample in the past that they wanted me to check out more of their limited edition tees.

For those of you that are unaware, Social T is a company that runs on the subscription model that is increasing in popularity. Basically, you can pay each month, or a prepaid plan (2, 3, 6, or 12 months) and a new tee will arrive on your doorstep around the 15th of each month. Social T will only print as many tees as they have subscribers for that month, so these tees are pretty limited edition, if you’re into that kind of thing. Of course, you do have to make a leap of faith with services like these since you don’t know what will be inside the envelope each month. I quite like being surprised when I receive a tee (I make a point of never picking a certain design when offered a sample), but I guess its different when you’re actually paying for the clothing. Luckily, Social T do have a style that they don’t deviate from too dramatically, so you can judge from their back catalogue of ‘issues‘ whether your style fits with theirs, and hopefully you won’t be disappointed at what you pull out of the package each month.

I know I said that the house style at Social T doesn’t deviate very much, but that doesn’t mean that they’re sticking to a certain type of design, I just think that if you like one of their tees, its fairly likely that you’re going to like most of them. Social T aren’t just making tees that look good (hey, they’re called ‘Social’ for a reason), they’re also meant to help spread the message about social issues and spark up a conversation, and they manage to do it in a way that isn’t preachy. For example, today’s shirt (Issue 15, January 2008) is a bit on the lighter side and has “I resolve to be a better human being” written on it, a lot, obviously as a reference to people making New Year’s resolutions, which isn’t exactly a hard hitting social issue, and as such doesn’t serve as a very good example for what I was trying to say, but I would imagine it could have been a pretty decent pick-me-up if I’d got this in the mail in mid-January just as I was starting to lose track of my resolutions and think that “one doughnut isn’t going to matter.”
Quality is impressive (shocking, I know). The stock tee is provided by American Apparel, so the vast majority of readers know what you’re getting there (soft cotton, sweatshop-free, made in Los Angeles, slim fit, hipster friendly), and the printing is good too. You can feel the print, but it certainly is not rough. I can also attest to the print on Social T’s goods being long-lasting too, since issue 13 is still looking good in my wardrobe with a distinct lack of fading. Instead of a custom tag or the standard AA tag, Social T have printed a tag inside the shirt which has all the expected details on it, plus a mysterious ‘rn#103255′, which I guess might be some kind of print number, so that you know its limited edition, but I could easily be wrong, it has happened before… once.Costiness=$32 per month (some prepaid deals are cheaper per month) Link

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Tags » green • Mens • message • olive • review • Reviews • social • social T • Subscription • T-shirts • Womens

I neglected to tell you about Glenn Jones’ (better known as Glennz, who has had many tees printed by Threadless) new tee store a few weeks ago when everyone else was mentioning it. It’s not that I don’t like the designs, I just forgot to do it, but hopefully I can make it up to you by posting about the three newest designs that went on sale at his store a couple of days ago.

My fave is ‘Team Photo‘, it suits Glennz style really well, ‘Haunted Housework‘ is pretty funny and works well as a tee since there’s still a lot of people out there that love Ghostbusters, but I’m not really a big fan of ‘After Hours‘, possibly because I’m more of a pirate person than ninja person, though the image is pretty funny.

Glennz

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Tags » brown • funny • glenn jones • glennz • green • grey • T-shirts • Threadless

I know that as a Brit I’m meant to pretend to hate French people for reasons that most people are unaware of, but I just can’t do it, especially when it comes to t-shirt stores like Monsieur Poulet. They’re a French t-shirt design competition that are putting out designs with a distinctly European flavour (funny how design competitions all have different styles), and printing them onto fair trade cotton.

This t-shirt is definitely French, French down to its very core. For those of you that are unaware (and since most of you are American I wouldn’t expect you to know about this subject), the Chabal in question is Sébastien Chabal a French rugby-union player who can be described as ‘a bit of a beast’, when he comes on the pitch you know something is going to happen. From the looks of things Mr. P had a contest where Chabal was the theme and this design was one of the winners. I can’t remember what the rest of the French rugby team look like, so I’m not sure f this is the entire team with Chabal highlighted in a different colour, but its still cool nevertheless.

Costiness=€26 Link

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Tags » chabal • France • green • monsieur poulet • olive • rugby • sport

Come on guys, lets dip our toes in the morally ambiguous water of me writing about my advertisers! The problem with writing about my advertisers is that I like what they do, so I’m not being a shill, but it does look kind of odd, I must admit.

Waterloo, have returned to what I feel are their roots, tees about music and movies that were released before I was born. But as well know, being alive when it happened doesn’t mean you can’t care about it. A man walked on the moon (the freakin’ moon) twenty five years before I was born, but I still know it was important, then again, I was a history student, so I should understand the importance of the past. The three tees celebrate the Woodstock festival (by using its poster image), music magazine Creem (using Robert Crumb’s iconic milk bottle image), and John Lennon & Yoko Ono (JL and I have the same birthday, fun fact!). I think my favourite of the three is the Woodstock one, just for the simplicity and it not being a truly in-your-face reference to the festival, although I guess that the Creem one achieves that obliqueness too.

All three are available for $22.95 on presale, which lasts until March 31st, when the price will be raised by 10%.

Waterloo

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Tags » brown • creem • green • john lennon • music • presale • red • t-shirt red • the beatles • waterloo • white • woodstock • yoko ono

Me&Yu, the Manchester-based fashion label that has a store in the delightfully bizarre Affleck’s Palace, released their Sping/Summer range fairly recently, and they encouraged me to check it out. Being a fan of all things Me&Yu, and most things Mancunian, check it out I did.

They’ve continued along the same theme of doing fairly weird things in a hand drawn style and having equally weird photoshoots (bigger product pics would be nice on detailed artwork though). I really like the green and grey colourway of this monster doodle hoodie (the pullover version), and I really like prints on hood linings as is shown in the zip-up version, and I get the feeling that I’d like the drawings too, but its a bit hard to make them out. Still, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that this is a cool design.

Costiness=£40/50 Links: Pullover/Zipper

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Tags » doodle • green • grey • hand drawn • hoodie • manchester • me&yu • monster • UK

This is another of those hoodies that I actually wouldn’t buy and wear, but feel like I should mention it to you just because its interesting. I really like the hood, the way that its slightly funneled, and also because it wraps around itself slightly at the front. Its not every day that you see pockets with the seams on the outside either, and whilst I actually quite like the colourway, there’s a certain je ne sais quoi that means I’m just not that enthusiastic about this hoodie.

Costiness=$84 Link (use rep code AS7594 for up to 20% off your Karmaloop order)

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Tags » check • green • grey • hoodie • Karmaloop • orisue • pullover

Like Godzilla? Like Mothra? Like Ghidrah? Like Gigan? Got $32 spare?

Good, you can get 4 tees with those monsters on for just $32 (… $8 per tee) as part of Cotton Factory’s Tokyo Pack. Personal I think that Tokyo Destruction Pack would have been slightly more accurate, but I don’t argue with bargains!

Costiness=$32 Link

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Tags » black • brown • cotton factory • ghidrah • gigan • godzilla • green • grey • monster • mothra • pack • red • t-shirt