Cool Hunting

The collectable desirability of vintage Rock and Roll t-shirts nears that of sneakers. In the case of the Rock shirts however, the thinner and closer the garment is to the end of its life the better. A Mötley Crüe tee, owned by a slightly chubby and sadly misunderstood teenager, only to be used later by her mother to clean toilets, simply adds to the shirt’s mystique.
This aesthetic has created a wholly welcome design mandate to modern t-shirt making, borrowing not only the aged look, but more importantly the thin fabric and soft buttery feel of the old standbys. Not lost to this is Rock’n Clothing, an online emporium and design company out of Illinois. Their shirts employ a nice faded print, thin neck ribbing, good aged colors, and of course that oh-so-soft luxurious vintage feel.
by Patrick Speckman
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Philadelphia-based design studio Print Liberation carries a line of tees, prints, and accessories that will make any font nerd swoon. Printed on American Apparel, we like the layout and concept of the "Don't Give Up" tee, which avoids the bumper sticker-like pitfalls of other message shirts by using non-centered and so-clichéd-it's-meaningless text and was also one of Print Liberation's wheat paste campaigns. The same...
The creation of longtime collaborators Ryan Sovereign and William Beck, since 2005 this fledging Brooklyn-based creator of silk ties has injected some fashion and style in the oft-staid accessory that is the neck-tie. Graduates of RISD and Industrial Design & Sculpture, these two young designers have crafted a neck tie that the wearer feels like he's getting away with something when he dons. Two...
Skin-deep fashion gets literal with these synthetic skin accessories made by French artist Olivier Goulet. Marisa wrote about them today on Needled, pointing out that the totes, purses, laptop sleeves, belts, and bracelets can be customized with tattoos and piercings. She also explains how the creepy chic aesthetic's purposefully aged-looking material is intended to reference natural "instinctive" bodies versus the artificial....
The latest from the Los-Angeles-based label I Heart Guts (covered over in Spear-land earlier this month) is "Don't Lose Your Lunch" (baby style pictured). Like the rest of the I Heart Guts line (the brainchild of a designer/former teacher with a penchant for Japanese pop art), this tee anthropomorphizes organs and pairs them with puns in both English and Japanese. The upshot is a...
Low Tee makes men's bathing suits from vintage t-shirts (props for recycling). The suits are fully lined in Lycra, and have elastic around the legs and waist, which also has a drawstring. Because the suits are made from vintage t-shirts they are all one-of-a-kind (which we also like). And if you ask nicely you could probably send in one of your own shirts to...
The latest entry in our Gift Guide is this 100 Birds tee by LA-based designers MomiMomi, who make well-fitted, soft shirts with illustrative designs. For their holiday line, they printed this tropical bird-design on a pinkish color they call Taro. Time is running out to get this and all the other carefully-selected gifts in our guide, like our Limited Edition Exclusives, for the holidays....
