Today’s tees are up for anything
Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006
It has been said that jeans and a T-shirt is the uniform of the American male — but that was before designers and celebrities got involved. Now that tees can cost as much as $ 50, and denim $ 200, a man might feel too stricken by the price tag of his outfit to carry himself as comfortably as he looks. But you get what you pay for, after a fashion. As the work of Arkansas ’ growing ranks of original T-shirt designers attests, the pricier new breed of tees is more refined in fabric and politics alike. A certain class of wearers is just as likely to inspect clothing labels for the “sweatshop-free” designation as it is to want to see the word “organic” stamped on its vegetables.
But who are we kidding ? All things being equal, as well as flatteringly cut, a shirt bearing an arty rendering of Che Guevara’s face can hold appeal even for those with a threadbare understanding of his principles. As Tshirt prices have gone up, so have their degrees of graphic sophistication, and Arkansas’ fashion artists are in on the act. With bold patterns, self-contained line drawings or couturelike embellishments, artisanal T-shirts are used to signify an independent, creative erudition the same way shirts with athletic-team logos signify sportiness, or those printed with drinking-anddebauching catchphrases signify an up-for-anything goofiness.
Urban Outfitters stocks the goofy shirts, more expensive but not much more clever than the Wal-Mart and Target versions, but they also offer a man’s T-shirt with all-over print resembling the shabby-chic wallpaper you might find in a rock musician’s trashed hotel room, or Paul Frank’s music-inspired sketches, each for about $ 28. Women can select from a crew neck that gives the impression that a full-body photograph of Twiggy has been Xeroxed onto their chests ($ 32 ), or trompe l’oeil tees with motifs ranging from the faux collared-shirtand-necktie routine to a one-dimensional sailor’s blouse ($ 28 ).
And the brand American Apparel, through advertising that cuts models’ heads off at the chin, insinuating that they refused to sign releases for fear of sexual exploitation, has managed to persuade consumers that they are engaging in an act of subversive individualism merely by buying a plain white T-shirt.
But even with their fashion-world credentials, those merchandisers are of the mass market.
Back to the organic vegetable buyer: Whenever possible, he’d prefer to buy produce cultivated from local soil. In Arkansas’ designer T-shirt niche, that’s possible, too.
At Section 8, a southwest Little Rock skateboarding accessories shop, proprietor Matt Taylor designs and screenprints his own line of shirts under the label Phunkee Love (www. phunkeelove. com ). Featuring silhouetted women, overlapping typography and striking cobalt / hazard-orange color contrasts, the label’s style blends elements of the churlish irreverence of skate culture as well as the operatic decadence of the CD-booklet art from an Outkast album.
Juanita’s Cafe and Bar on Little Rock’s Main Street is an unlikely epicenter of Arkansas-based T-shirt design. Chris Hess, who works there as a bartender, and David Fowlkes, the venue’s in-house photographer, each has his own line.
Signature shirts from the Hess Clothing label (www. myspace. com / hessclothing ) resemble highend doodles of facial studies set off by inventive bleaching or framing devices such as filmstrip borders. In Fowlkes’ collection (www. davidfowlkes. net ), the dominant graphic across the chest — often biker-chic skulls which have sprouted wings — is but one detail in the designer’s ambidextrous handiwork, which layers baby-doll cuts, textured seamwork, beading and other appliques on supple fabric that softens the hard edges of the imagery.
BAR CODE The men use the bar scene to their advantage. Though they, too, market their shirts at Section 8, Hess began by selling his designs out of a backpack from the behind the bar. And both have product-placed their shirts on the touring rock bands that pass through, creating a ripple effect in visibility and Internet sales. Women, who have even less of a chained-at-the-neck attachment to collared shirts than men, make and wear artistic T-shirts, too. Little Rock artists Erin Lorenzen and Georgia English market their casual, wearable designs at the Box Turtle boutique in Hillcrest — Lorenzen under her own name and English using the label Peach Pavlova. Lorenzen’s work draws in subject and technique from time spent in Argentina, where a screen-printing class was one of her pursuits. Her shirts employ South American colloquialisms and iconography against pastel fields, for a slightly askew perspective. For her Peach Pavlova shirts, English affects a kind of punk decoupage, stitching wildly patterned flower petals, quotations and, in one case, a horse’s head in profile, onto a monochromatic background.
Recently, these designers gathered at Juanita’s and discussed all things T-shirt related, from aesthetic inspirations to pricing strategies ($ 25 for screen-printed tees, as much as $ 50 or $ 60 for intricately sewn designs ), fabric suppliers and making the leap to larger markets.
Not up for discussion was whether the group should discuss their work as an art form. The idea that they are artisans was woven into the fabric of the premise.
A T-shirt “is where young people have their first form of self-expression,” says Fowlkes, 30.
“You go into the average 18-to-35-year-old person’s home — there’s not original art on the walls,” he says. “The only time you’re going to get your image and your expression out there is when you’re putting it on fast-food things like clothes. The graphic designer, I think, is really the modern artist of our society.” “ A lot of art is stuck in museums, ” Lorenzen concurs. In addition to fashion design, Lorenzen creates paintings and sculpture built from found objects, as in a recent collection of her work displayed at the Historic Arkansas Museum. “In a way, I’m able to spell things out more clearly with the T-shirts than with sculptures or paintings. “ I still use the same images I’m thinking about using for paintings. Sometimes the shirt comes first and sometimes the painting does.” MACHISMO AND MIAMI Despite their shared sensibilities, the designers bear different influences and stand at different stages in their marketing and production processes.
Lorenzen sought her fellow designers’ advice on where to stock the men’s shirts she hoped to branch into — a natural progression since much of her work explores notions of machismo. Meanwhile, through musicindustry connections, Fowlkes and Hess have established a presence in Miami, a fashion mecca for those wanting to create an impression of being put-together without looking like they’ve tried too hard — a posture tailor-made for the one-of-a-kind or limited-edition boutique T-shirt.
Hess, 31, who has gold ringlets of hair and a rock-star bearing of his own — imagine Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High re-glammed for the red carpet — will have his shirts featured on participants in the second season of MTV’s reality series 8 th & Ocean. The show follows a group of young models vying for modeling assignments, going clubbing and lounging poolside in their rentfree Miami apartment. Consequently, the sumptuous visuals carry the same weight as, if not outweighing, the plot. Can’t hurt to have product-placement like that.
Hess launched his line when he lost out on a T-shirt he had bid for on eBay. The shirt was a vintage issue from a New York marathon. He decided he could simply buy a blank T-shirt and screen his own version of the logo. Subsequently, he began visiting bookstores to study fashion magazines for European design trends, which show up in the artwork he hand sketches for application on his shirts.
Hess described his motivation as enabling the individualism that the artistic-minded covet, whether they can create their own art or not.
“We all see this as our expression,” he says, glancing around the table for affirmation. “None of us like walking into a place and seeing everybody wearing American Eagle and all that.” The designers also differ in inventories. Taylor confessed he has a larger stock of Phunkee Love shirts than he’d like — it helps when a band’s tour bus pulls up. When the DJs and electronic musicians LTJ Bukem and MC Conrad were in town to play at Juanita’s, they visited Section 8. But, as with many celebrities, there was the expectation that they wouldn’t be paying for the merchandise. “They came in and, I felt like, almost took advantage of me,” Taylor says. “They took, like, three or four hats and three or four shirts each. But, they’re huge in the [United Kingdom ]. So basically you’re just dressing dudes for a week.” Meanwhile, with their more time and labor-intensive designs, Lorenzen, Fowlkes and English might be hard-pressed to supplement a band’s wardrobe with a week’s worth of Tshirts, gratis.
But they all agree current conditions are favorable for their T-shirt specialties — and that doesn’t just mean the arrival of hot weather. The designers are practicing their craft during a confluence of relaxed rules, fashionable cuts and the recruitment of men as fashion avatars.
“Especially with the cuts, a big, boxy tee looks goofy when you tuck it in,” says Taylor. “But with some Kenneth Cole slacks, now you can throw on a black, slim-cut tee and make it look nice.” “It’s not sloppy anymore,” Fowlkes says. “The cut and fabric has a lot to do with it. If you wear a nice, fitted black tee and pants, you can go most places. If you throw a blazer on top if it, you can almost get in a wedding.”
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