by Andy on April 28, 2012
Electric Earth are quite a new t-shirt label from the UK, but they have comes out of their corner swinging and they’ve already got a decent selection of likable designs. The shirts are organic, which is always nice to see, but that hasn’t resulted in the price being pushed up to exorbitant levels, which as you’d imagine is always nice to see, I hate it when brands take the ‘organic’ term as a license to boost their profits. Promising start from this brand, I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with next.
Costiness=£18.99 Buy it at Electric Earth Mens / Womens
by Andy on April 21, 2012
Urban Hand got in touch to introduce themselves, and in the process they gave me a very nice overview of what the brand is all about:
we are a new clothing company based in Dublin, Ireland. We started trading at the end of last year and our original collection included t-shirts and hoodies for men. We concentrated mainly on logo placement designs to try and get the brand established. We expanded the range to include hats and caps as well as a range of t-shirts, hoodies and bags for women. We are now taking the next step along the road and are incorporating designs by young, up and coming Irish designers. After doing some research into the cotton and printing industries we have decided that all our t-shirts are now going to be fully organic offerings ie a 100% organic cotton t-shirt, printed organically using water based inks by a company which is certified by the soil association so we’re doing our bit for the environment. Priced at €19.99 with free standard delivery to Ireland & the UK we hope it’ll be a success.
When I see all those ecologically sound terms being thrown around I worry, because it tends to mean that there’s going to be a high price tag attached to the shirt, so it’s really refreshing to find a brand creating tees are guilt-free without having a premium price. I have my usual quibbles about brands that focus heavily on their name and logo in their initial releases, but that’s a personal choice and these guys have a pretty cool logo so that does make things a bit better.
by Andy on March 15, 2012
The Tree Shirt House got in touch recently to let me know about their recently launched (November 2011) t-shirt brand. They’re based in Singapore (but sell in Euros, which explains why the people on the about page don’t look particularly Asian) and they are trying to sell tees ‘the right way’. All the designs are meant to tell a stroy about wildlife, and are printed on 100% organic cotton. Each shirt is ‘limited’ to 500 tees per design. As with most brands of this size I always tend to assume that the 500 figure is an arbitrary upper limit and that they don’t have 500 of each design in stock, because that would be quite a lot for a two person startup. For every tee that is purchased $5 (USD) will go to support on of their chosen causes, which I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear are animal-related.
The shirts themselves aren’t preachy, which is always appreciated, and the designs, whilst all following a similar theme, really appeal to me with their bold crests. Also, did you see the photos of their packaging? You can turn it into a bird house! I can’t see a cardboard bird house lasting that long where I live, but I’m sure that in warmer climbs it would make a nice home for some winged friends.
by Andy on December 9, 2011
This new moose shirt from OMUNKY isn’t my favourite shirt that they’ve ever released, but it certainly does fit with the season and the artwork looks good.
I like the refresh of the penguin design (and continue to like the idea of tweaking designs when reprinting them), it makes a good use of the whole shirt.
Both shirts are printed on 100% certified organic cotton and available now.
by Andy on November 10, 2011
Let’s be honest, a t-shirt store haven’t a new site isn’t massive news, as someone who has experienced the redesign process from the inside numerous times I know it feels like the most important thing in the world, but unless you’re Facebook you’re never going to get a massive amount of feedback or excitement even though you spent days and days obsessing over the tiniest pieces of code.
Their new site is an improvement, it looks nicer than the last version and there have been a load of new features introduced (faster checkout, new payment options, and a rewards programme).
New tee ‘Wet Walrus’ is gorgeous, definitely my favourite shirt that they’ve ever released, I love the colourway and the use of negative space is just gorgeous. The other release is ‘MUNKY Tree‘ which regular readers will notice isn’t new at all but actually a reprint that has been tweaked a bit. I like the idea of artists going back to older designs and giving them a refresh, there’s no point in being nostalgic about tee designs when people feel they can improve on them if their own talents have improved.
by Andy on September 22, 2011
The two shirts up top are new (yes, inlcuding the logo one, it’s in a new colourway), and the two beneath are the reprints, all of them are $22.99 each. When you put all the shirts together like that it’s interesting just how much that Rick sticks two a style with his designs, it must be working for him!
Oh, and OMUNKY are running a blogger contest, giving a shirt to the first blogger to make a referred sale (you need to say “Andy from HYA sent me” or something along those lines on the order confirmation page). If that blogger happens to be me I will give the tee to one of the other HYA bloggers so they can review it, which works out well for everyone. The winning blog also gets a coupon code to use for a year that will be good for 18% off, so you guys will benefit from the win too. If another blog wins I’ll still write about the couponcode, it would just be nice if the coupon code was hideyourarms rather than someotherblogthatisinnowayasgoodashyaandprobablysmellsfunny.
