I was watching Entourage last night (we’re only a week behind here in the UK, which unusually close for us) and I spotted Viking Quest’s very own Johnny Drama wearing a tee that I just knew would be on the internet somewhere…

… and I was right! The design is by Worn Free, who recreate designs that were famously worn by musical heroes from ‘back in the day’ such as such as Kurt Cobain, Debbie Harry (who I once saw stood on the street in Amsterdam - true story) and this design, which was worn by Lester Bangs, a man I first encountered when he was played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in my favourite movie of all time, Almost Famous, who was in Mission Impossible 3 with Tom Cruise, who was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon.

It ain’t a cheap tee, but if you want to look like Johnny Drama then I’m pretty sure you’ve got bigger things to worry about than the amount a t-shirt costs.

Costiness=$40 Buy it here @ Worn Free

Oh, and do you like my TV? 52 glorious inches! If only ITV broadcast entourage in HD.

• 2 Comments
Tags » Celebrities • entourage • grey • johnny drama • lester bangs • music • retro • T-shirts • television • text • worn free

Oh Hayden, you pint-sized hero you, are you having a little jab at the paparazzi by wearing a t-shirt that has a camera on it? I’ve got no idea where she (or her stylist) got the tee, but this one from Amorphia Apparel looks pretty cool.

• 0 Comments
Tags » celebritites • celebs • hayden panettiere • hot model • T-shirts • television • yellow

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

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

Remember how I became mildly obsessed with writing about and hunting down the t-shirts that were featured in the Channel 4 comedy show The IT Crowd? Well, series three has been written, and now the producers want public help in dressing the set with large amounts of geeky goodness.

How would you like to help in designing the look of series 3? Specifically, you’d be helping us choose the stuff that litters the main set. I’m talking about posters, comics, fanzines, T-shirts… anything you’ve seen in the last few months that you think is pretty cool or captures the spirit of the show or a particular character. By now, most of you know the kind of things I like…weird toys, indie comics, sci-fi, geek references, internet memes, boardgames…normally I’d delight in tracking down the stuff myself, but as I say, it’s just not going to happen this time round.

In the very first draft of the show I described the set as looking like “a cross between a comics shop and the batcave”. I wanted it to feel like a geek Shangri-La, and in each series I’ve felt we nearly got there. Maybe this time, with you guys involved, we’ll finally nail it.

Please send your suggestions to ben.capel@talkbackthames.tv

There are loads of suggestions for what should be in the office on the BoingBoing post where this whole thing originated at (BB Cory is a consultant on the show, I think), but I’m sure a few of you tee designers/sellers might fancy seeing your tees up on screen. The show is pretty popular in the UK, and I get a surprisingly large amount of traffic from people searching for IT crowd shirts, so it could actually end up being fairly profitable for you if you were to end up on the show.

• 0 Comments
Tags » it crowd • T-shirts • television

I was pretty much only posting this t-shirt because it gives me an opportunity to point out my massive new TV (52 glorious inches!), but then I actually gave it a decent look, and I realised that its actually rather cleverer (how can a word about something being smart make you sound so stupid when you say it?) than I first gave it credit for. The minimalist frontage with a standby ‘light’ and a jack for headphones, is strongly contrasted with the busy goings on at the back, although I was expecting the text on the back to reveal some kind of joke, some of the sockets being labeled with more human attributes than ‘video output’, for example, but I guess Olly wanted to take this down a more serious route. Well, as serious as you can get when you’re wearing a tee that tries to make you look like an AV amp.

That said, I wouldn’t actually wear this. I appreciate the concept, and its executed very well, but I think it would make me look like I worked for a home theatre company if I wore it.

Costiness=$20 Tee Link

• 3 Comments
Tags » black • clever • olly moss • T-shirts • television • Threadless

Like many Americans, and about a dozen Brits, I was hooked on Mad Men from pretty much the first episode, so I’m eagerly awaiting it return to British screens now after the second season began a few days ago in the US (I might have to resort to ‘other means’ of watching it though). Whilst I don’t expect to be switching the content of HYA from streetwear and indie clothing stores to vintage inspired men’s tailoring, I thought you might get a kick out of Valet Mag’s look into how the costume designers dress the men of Sterling Cooper.

Valet Mag: Dressing the Part - Inside the Stylish World of Mad Men

• 3 Comments
Tags » 60s • mad men • retro • suit • television • vintage

If you’ve ever seen the TV show ‘The Big Bang Theory’ you may well have noticed that the characters, who we’re meant to believe are more interested in quantum theory than fashion, can be found wearing some pretty cool t-shirts. I guess that someone else noticed this and decided to hunt down where the tees can be bought online, and put together a site all about it. Some of the links aren’t exactly right, I doubt that CBS’s wardrobe department are buying their tees from Cafepress, but its still a pretty good resource.

Sheldon Shirts [Photo credit: NY Times]

• 0 Comments
Tags » big bang theory • geek • nerd • robots • T-shirts • television • tv

Ahh, too truer words have never been said, people that I meet always think that they’ve had a great idea for a t-shirt (a lot of people think I make or sell t-shirts, not just write about them), and they’re usually lame, so I have to smile politely and nod to spare their feelings. Clearly this isn’t just a UK issue, as shown by this newspaper headline from the title sequence of American Dad (season 3, episode 13 for those of you that are interested).

• 2 Comments
Tags » American Dad • funny • headline • newspaper • television

According to the description:

scrappy was an old columbia studios character that failed. it’s like a mickey mouse human version

I’m not really a big fan of retro designs, but I like the story behind this, using a cartoon character that never caught the public’s imagination. Just colouring in the character’s hat and leaving the rest as outlines and background colour is pretty cool too. I’m not really sure if its available to buy, but the uploader has put the pic into the Independent T-Shirt Labels Pool on Flickr so its entirely possible that they made the tee themselves, so if you really want one just drop the user a message and you might be able sort something out.

Photo Credit: Scrappy by sbariniesto (the picture is ‘all rights reserved’ but hopefully me liking the tee will mean I don’t get an e-mail asking for the pic to be removed)

• 0 Comments
Tags » cartoons • character • flickr • grey • scrappy • television

I know I’m pretty late posting this, we Brits don’t usually get American shows for a while after they’ve aired (although The Daily Show and Colbert Report are only on a one-day delay, thankfully), but I’m a fan of 30 Rock and whilst I wouldn’t buy this tee (over-priced, and slightly offensive to all but the tiny minority of people in the UK that watch 30 Rock) I think its really cool that NBC actually sell items from fictional TV shows that have appeared in their own shows, in fact, of the 9 items of apparel in the 30 Rock mini store only 2 pieces have the boring show logo on them, the rest are just things from the show, like the Sheinhardt Wig company or the Tracy Jordan Meat Machine (”Meat is the new bread!”), which I guess makes a lot of sense since only fans of the show are going to buy this stuff, and they’re going to understand what all the quotes and jokes on the tees are about.

Costiness=$24 Link (or get a cheaper version at Moe Wampum) [via TVSquad]

• 0 Comments
Tags » 30 rock • black • merchandise • MILF Island • NBC • T-shirts • television