Remember that t-shirt that had a glove stitched onto it? Yeah, that was fun, wasn’t it? Turns out that itself, the company behind the infamous Glove Pocket tee, aren’t just a one-hit wonder, they’ve got more tees that don’t suck, and I handily put pictures of them into the gallery. The black tee is called ‘Never take Candy from a Strange Thing‘, this seven-colour pastel print is yet another great design from Wotto, and marks a departure from itself’s previous minimalist style. ‘More tape‘ is far more in keeping with what I’d expect from these guys, a black and white colourway that’s also kinda funny.

Both of these designs are winners of the Itself design competition. The prize package for winners is pretty substantial, you get $1750 in cash and $250 in ‘itself-coins’ (…store credit), and if your tee is popular and sells out its initial run you’ll get the same again for the second print run of 3000 tees.

itself

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Tags » black • design competition • funny • here itself • itself • Mens • minimalist • monochrome • T-shirts • white • Womens • wotto

Its simple, its just text, its just black and white, but its definitely very cool. Am I the only person that gets reminded of “Renegade Master” by Wildchild/Fatboy Slim when you read “Back Once Again” on this tee?

For those of you that give a damn about people and the planet, these tees are carbon emission neutral, and not made using sweatshop labour… huzzah!

Costiness=$24.99 Link

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Tags » lowman • monochrome • T-shirts • text • typography • white

The second of tee to fall out of the envelope from Your Eyes Lie this week was Skull Bow. Well, I presume its called Skull Bow, YEL don’t really name their tees, but thats what the product ID says so I’m going to roll with it. In my review earlier this week I spoke a bit about the passion that YEL have for their product and what they’ve been through to get where they are, and I’m not going to repeat myself about that, so check out the first review if you’re after some background on the company.

It seems like I’ve spent a lot of this week talking about how it isn’t necessarily that important to ‘get’ a design or understand the meaning behind a t-shirt, and when I’m presented with an image of a skull with a bow-tie wrapped around its non-existent neck, with three rings in the skull where the ear should be, I’m inclined to suggest that not understanding the meaning of the shirt is okay here too, rather than attempting some ill-informed pop-psychology. I really like the image itself, the black on white print in the photocopy style gives it a washed-out grittiness, whilst it also has a few lines around the top of the skull that make it look like an illustration that you’d find in an old school textbook. I do have to take issue with the three ear rings though, they give it an almost cartoon-ish quality that doesn’t sit too well with what I regard as a fairly macabre image, even if the bow-tie is probably there to provide some comic relief.

The quality is impressive, I know YEL spent a long time creating a stock tee to print on and I think all the effort was worth it, they really have produced a beautifully soft, high-quality t-shirt that I know lasts well with washing and doesn’t lose its shape. The print quality is decent too, and doesn’t fade too much with repeated washings, although I think that tees of this style are well suited to a vintage look, so fading probably wouldn’t be as bigger deal as usual if it were to occur, I guess.

Costiness=£15.50 Link

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Tags » Mens • monochrome • review • Reviews • skull • white • Womens • YEL • youreyeslie

It’s always fun to get mail from unexpected places, and Thailand is one of those places. I’m pretty used to receiving mail from America by now, but the far East is still something of a novelty for me in terms of mail, and even though I know that Your Eyes Lie are a UK/Thai operation, I was expecting a package with stamps bearing the Queens face rather than a serious looking Thai guy. I’m sure the very mention of Thailand and clothes has immediately got some of you worrying about the conditions that these clothes were made in, but have no fear, these tees have nothing to do with little kids that have excellent sewing skills and a lot to do with a creative partnership between British graphic designer Ben Yarwood and Thai fashion designer Alisa Longsuwan.
I met Ben at Margin and we had a good chat about all things YEL and HYA, he told me all about the stresses of creating a tee to print on (no stock AAs here!), the significance of being picked up by Urban Outfitters, and gave me a better overall understanding for a brand that I knew I liked, but didn’t quite get.This tee is also something that I don’t quite get. The phrase ‘Hand of Prey’ is actually a Googlewhack, with the link going to a PDF about the History of Veterinary Medicine in the late Islamic Period… so I don’t think that’s where they got their inspiration from for this piece. But I think not knowing what it means is pretty cool too, t-shirts don’t necessarily have to mean something, and you don’t necessarily have to understand it if they do. The important thing is that they look cool, and undoubtedly this does, black and white tees always give you a lot of options when you’re pairing up your tee with something, which is why I like that combo so much.
Considering how much time YEL put into creating a quality t-shirt (I think they spent about six months testing and retesting different styles, cuts and material blends) its hardly a surprise that they’ve produced something impressive. The first tee of theirs that I reviewed is still going strong four months on, although you should bear in mind that since I own so many tees I don’t wear the same tee as often as most people do. It is quite a fitted shirt, and not particularly long in the body either, definitely a quality product, and the custom tags are a nice touch as well.

Costiness=£15.50 Link

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Tags » • bird • monochrome • review • Reviews • Thailand • UK • white • YEL • youreyeslie

Am I the only one who feels a little bit uncomfortable when companies sell items that have recently deceased celebrities on them. I’m sure that its intended to be a fashion-based tribute to Heath, but when they charge $45 for the tee they must be making a profit on it, and whether they mean to or not, they’re profiting on someone’s death, although looking around the rest of the CyanaBoutique this is actually one of the cheaper pieces (they’re on the higher end of things), so my argument may be moot.Still, let’s pretend this isn’t a tee with a dead celebrity on it and all of a sudden its a really cool image, which I feel is slightly cheapened by the addition of the ‘R.I.P Heath’ text. I like the black and white print as well, I think that attempting a colour print could have ruined this design.

Costiness=$45 Link

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Tags » heath ledger • memorial • monochrome • R.I.P • t-shirt • tribute • white

Your Eyes Lie, the monochrome-loving makers of too-cool-for-school tees have dropped what they’ve described as a big update. No new designs as far as I can tell, but they’ve spruced up the site, and if you click at the bottom of their homepage then you can see some rather sexy looking models… modeling the YEL Spring/Summer 08 range. It’s a lot nicer to see actual people wearing the tees rather than just the tee, I’m always far more inclined to be buy something if I can see it being worn, which is kind of odd since it usually detracts from the design.

Your Eyes Lie

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Tags » black • monochrome • white • your eyes lie

Top quality independent clothing from the UK, boy does it make me feel proud to see Brits doing something great in an industry where I usually see the American side. EIO Clothing are a seriously hot label too, they’re worn by people like Pete Doherty (I feel dirty just writing that), Lady Sovereign, Sugababes, Jamie Callum, CSS, New Young Pony Club, the Klaxons and Andrew Bowness (wink). I know that just because a celebrity wears something doesn’t make it cool, but come on, that’s a pretty cool list, especially the guy at the end of it!

Their latest range, code-named “Till death Do Us Party,” dropped today (October 15th) and is filled with “bright, bold garments and Electro prints with washed out, burnt out and distressed finishing techniques.” That’s certainly true of the majority of the range, although my sample isn’t quite as nu-rave as some garment. The design is a really interesting take on the traditional crest, I’m not going to claim to understand if there’s any deeper meaning behind the design, but the illustration is absolutely beautiful.

Quality is top notch. The stock tee is by American Apparel. Printing quality feels great considering how large the print is. To distress the tees a little bit they’ve cut the ends of the sleeves and the hem at the bottom of the tee, so presumably the distressed look with increase the more you wear it. It’s a subtle effect, but I think it works quite well. I don’t usually mention packaging (usually because its boring), but my tee came in a really cool screenprinted envelope that you can see in the expandable thumbnails at the bottom.

Costiness=£26 Link (As this article was written before I went to France, the tee wasn’t in their shop yet, so I will update this link at the first opportunity I get)

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Tags » black • butterfly • crest • eio • eio clothing • monochrome • review • UK • white

First things first, this is totally, totally stolen inspired by a post from Teees last week.

I always used to think of Fullbleed as selling clothes for emo kids (though that wouldn’t be a bad thing), but their latest season seems to be a lot broader (i.e. less depressing), and there’s some gems in there.

This hoodie is a prime example, because, y’know, it’s totally awesome. That said, I’m not too sure that the pose of the surfers is all that well designed, it looks a bit stuck onto the bombs. But the printing over the zip is very well done, the size and placement (trailing down to the right) looks great, especially since it is going across the pocket. I like the way that the image takes little notice of the limitations that are placed on it by the pockets and zips, allowing for a larger image to be used, and when you’re using the sky in a design you often want to give a large sense of scale.

Costiness=$30 on American Apparel URL

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Tags » bmobs • clud • fullbleed • grey • hoodie • Mens • monochrome • surfing • Womens

EIO clothing is pretty new to me, I didn’t even know they existed until Addicteed pointed them out last week. They do have some pretty good tees and hoodies though, with a style that is more akin to the higher-class of British high-street designers, particularly with their sweatshirt designs. Which is nice to see considering how America-centric this blog is (what can I say? I like your style!).

The tree detail on the back of this hoodie is, er, detailed… but it is quite strange that the design comes from the side of the hoodie when from my understanding there isn’t anything on the front except for an embroidered logo, it would be nice if some roots wrapped around a bit to the front. Perhaps they do, my browser won’t open up the picture of the front of the hoodie (clarification in the comments would be appreciated).

Costiness=£49.99 URL

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Tags » addicteed • black • branches • eio • eio clothing • embroidery • hoodie • monochrome • tree

Blog-o-cool Crown Dozen marks the return of guest writers on HYA after a few weeks break, and it’s marked with a bit of a change. Instead of recommending something sleeved, Garrett is pointing out a couple of tees from HelloMinor.

FAVE CLOTHING: HelloMinor Death tee (which trumps my old fave, the
HelloMinor Love tee). For serious, HelloMinor and Mishka are the
brilliants.

Death:
http://www.hellominor.com/skulltee.jpg
http://www.hellominor.com/sneakpreview.htm

Love:
http://www.hellominor.com/tshirt7.htm

WHY: All-overs are everywhere this year, but this is the one that
first made me say “DAMN, I wish I had thought of that!”

BRAND: HelloMinor
PRICE: Not yet known.

If you want to buy the Death tee you might have to wait a while since its only on sneak preview at the moment, unless you love it that much that you’ll buy about 50 on wholesale and get it now. I can’t give you the costiness but I would suspect it will be the same or near the other tees currently on sale ($20), possibly more considering it is an all-over print, .

Thanks again to Garrett at Crown Dozen for getting involved.

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Tags » crown dozen • Garrett • guestpost • HelloMinor • monochrome • t-shirt • white