by Andy on August 25, 2010

You’d have to be a really old school HYA fan to remember the first time I ever mentioned Invicid on HYA back in December 2006, in fact, are any of you from back then? Drop a comment if you are, it would be really cool if some of you have managed to put up with my rambling for almost half a decade.
I’m not entirely sure whether Invicid went away, I might have just gone away from them, but either way they’re back, and they’ve got three new t-shirts to show for it, and a website that’s new to me, but you wouldn’t really expect any t-shirt shop to have the same design 4 years after your last visit. The designs have a hand drawn sketch style to them which I think works really well, it’s a fairly minimalist, subdued feel to them which makes me feel like they aren’t screaming for attention but still getting it because of the quality of the work.
by Andy on February 19, 2010

This reminds me of the kind of thing that Threadless would print 3 or 4 years ago, know what I mean?
Costiness=$16.99 Buy it at MySoti
by Andy on September 22, 2009

I seem to have been on a bit of a nostalgia kick recently, because I keep mentioning items and brands that have been on HYA before, but quite a long time ago.
Lucha Workshop are no exception, as they were last featured in
November last year, and they’re still putting out designs with black ink just like they used to. I’m not sure if only using black ink is a concious decision for the brand, or if they just happen to think it works best considering the designs largely have a sketched look to them, and people tend to sketch with something dark like pencil or a black pen…. or they just bought too much black ink. Loads of photos in the gallery.
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Regular readers will be aware of my trip to the US earlier this year to be an intern in Philadelphia, that trip probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Art In The Age (even though I wasn’t directly working for them), so you can’t really expect me to be unbiased when I’m writing about them. However, that doesn’t mean I’d cover up anything bad, think about it, how good does a company have to be to make someone that writes about t-shirts travel several thousand miles and live in a city he’s never been to before and knows no one in? Answer, pretty damn good.
Serendipiliciously, I first heard of the shoegaze* band Asobi Seksu when I was in Philly, their album accompanied me on many of the walks down Sansom on my way to the office. Even though they’re from Brooklyn I’ll forever associate them with Philadelphia, which is why this collaboration works well for me, it’s as if the AITA folks had a meeting and decided that the purpose of their latest collaborative tee was to help me reminisce!
The tee’s name, ‘Tour Doodles’, does a great job of setting up the concept, and I like it, I can imagine that if I were in a band that was touring around the states in a bus (and had an ounce of design skill) then I’d probably be drawing in a notebook all the time too, and all that doodling seems to have produced a pretty sweet tee.
Costiness=$32 Available from Art in The Age (mens/womens)
* Is it just me or is that the best name for a musical genre ever?

In their own words:
The label is called Curious Tales and it combines my love of
storytelling, fashion and the environment. (I also do upcycled clothes
and they were the inspiration for the stories, I started wondering
about who had worn the clothes before and started writing about them!)
All the tees feature scribbly drawings and the start of a story about
a weird character. On some of the men’s tees there’s a scribbly
headless body printed on the front so you become the character as soon
as you put it on.
They’re interactive as well, because you can get creative and continue
the tale yourself, uploading endings to the tale on the website.
Check them out at www.curioustales.com
Because I’m a boring old cynic I don’t really buy into all this ‘tales’ business, no matter how whimsical they might be, but I do like the hand drawn designs, and the tees being made of organic cotton or bamboo is a plus as well (I’m so into bamboo tees at the moment, really soft, great for summer). Curious Tales don’t just do tees either, they’ve got a whole load of accessories too.
From now until July 10th you guys can enjoy a very generous 25% off your order by entering the coupon code hideyourarms at the checkout, which is nice.
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by Andy on February 14, 2009

Nah, I can totally still be the first ever person to be President of the World/World Cup winner/Astronaut/guy that kicks Piers Morgan in the nuts until he realises just how much of a hideous human being he is.
Costiness=$15 Buy the tee Threadless: Type Tees [thanks, Micah!]