I don’t wanna get all Lynne Truss on you guys, but the slogan on this t-shirt is quite clearly a question, and what do questions have? Question marks. Otherwise, how would you know what was a question… ?

My pedantic grammar concerns aside, this tee is classic Local Celebrity. These guys really have the faux-80s look down. From the colourway to the slight vintage look on the white text print, to the ridiculously retro palm tree scene behind the car in all its tri-coloured glory, and of course the car itself is an icon of 80s excess, further enhancing the mood set by the design.

As I’ve mentioned in previous Local Celebrity reviews, I believe that LC create some of the finest quality t-shirts that I’ve come across. Ever. They’re incredibly soft, the prints don’t fade, the tees don’t get out of shape and they fit me just right (they’re a little shorter in the body than an AA tee). This latest example is no exception, top quality all the way. I know that sounds like an infomercial, but I really am very impressed.

Costiness=$25 Buy it here @ Local Celebrity

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Tags » 80s • aqua • blue • Local Celebrity • porsche • retro • review • Reviews • T-shirts

You’ll be seeing quite a lot more of Local Celebrity in the next few weeks, I arrived home one day to find quite a large box waiting for me that had 9 of their tees in it. To prevent you from getting Local Celebrity burnout I’m going to be spreading out the reviews over the next few weeks (interspersed with a few reviews for other brands) and I’ve had a few ideas for fun photoshoots too, which should keep things interesting. The first tee I’ve picked out of the big box has the logo of popular (though surprisingly short-lived) Japanese anime series Voltron on it. It’s amazing how many tees I wear that have really beautiful illustrations on them that get no notice from my friends, and then I wear a tee with an TV logo on it and all my friends go nuts. I guess that’s the power of a TV tee.

Fans of HYA (hey fans, love you!) will know that the second paragraph is usually where I talk about the design, but since this is the logo from the TV show, and a TV show that’s a month older than I am, then I don’t really know what to do. Whilst I doubt that a logo of this style would make it onto a TV show today, I think that its stood up pretty well to the tests of time and does work pretty well on a tee.

Usually when you see a tee like this, merchandise based on a TV show from the 80s, you wouldn’t usually expect much in terms of quality. That definitely is not the case with Local Celebrity. This is without a doubt one of the finest tees that I’ve ever had the pleasure to wear, I often hear people describing a soft tee as being soft like butter, but I think that might actually be doing this tee a disservice. I don’t know what goes into the special vintage wash they apply to each tee, but it must be some pretty special sauce. The fit is practically perfect for me, about the same width as an American Apparel tee, perhaps a touch smaller but a bit also slightly stretchier (so it evens out), and a little bit shorter in the body.

Embarassingly, I can’t remember what the name of the printing process is. You can’t feel the print at all, which makes me think its discharge print, but then I thought that you couldn’t get discharge to produce colours like that. Any chance a tee producer could enlighten me with their expert knowledge? Whatever the printing technique is, it feels damn good, and that’s the most important thing.

Costiness=$27 Buy the tee here

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Tags » anime • cartoon • Japanese • Local Celebrity • logo • mecha • retro • review • Reviews • T-shirts • television • vintage • voltron

Local Celebrity, who I like to think are a cut above the rest of the ‘funny’ crowd, have got a sale on at the moment. All you have to do is use the coupon code hotforteacher when you’re checking out whichever tees you’ve thrown into your virtual basket, and you’ll receive a 20% discount. They’re calling it a back to school sale, but I think that most of their 80s references will fly over the heads of most high schoolers.

Local Celebrity

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Tags » 20% • 80s • Coupon Codes • Local Celebrity • retro • sale • T-shirts

I bet you thought you’d never see the cotton filter again!

Shirt.Woot: As spotted by Jay, Shirt.Woot is now shipping to 45 countries beyond the US & Canadian borders, and are doing so for the low price of $5 too.

FFee Clothing: In other shipping related matters, FFee clothing are offering free shipping on all orders (even international ones) until the end of May.

T-Shirt Magazine: This site claims to be the only magazine about T-shirts whether online and off, which is… wrong (and Tcritic’s new look is farily magazine-like too), but lets not hold that against them, since there is some decent content on the site.

LaFraise: They can now print up to 12 colours on a shirt rather than the 8 that they had before, which is an increase of 50%… hurrah! To celebrate, they’re making up a test design (only 250 to be produced) called ‘Let’s Get Ready To Rainbow’, which I think is a pretty splendid phrase.

Threadless: If you’ve ever wanted to know, these are the people that do the screenprinting for Threadless (the art prints, not the tees). Also, here’s another magazine article fawning over Threadless and their business model, there’s pretty much nothing new in the article, but it does provide a decent overview.

Pete Wentz: Apparently he likes Local Celebrity clothing so much that he asked to take some after wearing it for a Fall Out Boy video shoot. Presumably he’s trying to save some cash for when Ashlee pops that baby out.

Creative Directory 101: A directory of sites for creative people, obviously, this will be helpful for people trying to get themselves set up in the tee biz (especially if you’re in the UK). [Disclosure: I'm still working on a HYA Directory that would crush compete with this site]

Pikiware: Mashable described this site as being the “Wordpress of Online Tshirts”, and since I love Wordpress and t-shirts I figured it was worth a peep, especially since the last time I found out about a t-shirt store from Mashable it was Design By Humans. From what I can tell, pikiware is basically a storefront system for people that print their own products, so that you can make your own Cafepress or Spreadshirt kind of business, though I have been known to make mistakes in the past, so I could easily be wrong. I don’t really see this being of huge interest to “HYA kinda people”, but since it does represent something kinda new in the tee world then I thought it was worth a mention.

Instructables: Here’s an instructable about photo-emulsion screenprinting, which I assume would be helpful for those of you that would like to print your own tees but don’t know how.

HipHipUK Discusses Crowdsourcing: This post seems to have become rather business-y, and this is the most business-y of the lot. Adam wrote an article a few weeks ago called “Which risks and problems will companies, that run Crowdsourcing business models, face in the future? Amongst other things” that I think should probably be a must read for any of you out there that are running a design competition or thinking about running a design competition.

Photojojo: They’ve got an article all about shooting pictures for use on eBay, but a lot of the techniques can also be applied to taking products shots for your tees and hoodies. There’s also a video on the same subject at Etsy if you don’t feel like reading.

Dadawan: They’re selling cool cushions now!

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Tags » Ashlee Simpson • crowdsourcing • cushions • dadawan • directory • etsy • fall out boy • ffee clothing • France • free • hiphipuk • instructables • lafraise • Local Celebrity • Mashable • pete wentz • Photojojo • pikiware • Plopculture • POD • printing • screenprinting • shipping • shirt.woot • T-Shirt Magazine • T-shirts • Threadless • UK