Cool Hunting
At São Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW) a kiosk stocked with tees caught my attention. Yet another project that creative team ag407 has its hand in, one of the firm's partners told me that they had come up with the idea to mimic the "bancas" or newstands of São Paulo. The pop-up version at fashion week was based on six other Banca de Camisetas that exist permanently in the city.
Founded in 2002, the concept features a rotating collection of tees by Brazilian high-end fashion designers, artists and graphic designers are packaged into neat rectangles and lined up along shelves like magazines. During SPFW there were several standout designs from some of the more well-known designers, like Rio-based multi-disciplinarians Oestudio and Marcelo Sommer's Do Estilista (a new line for the designer, which debuted very successfully at SPFW). Also of note, the collection included several collaborations as part of Fiat's Fashion Innovation campaign, which are still available from the Banca de Camisetas online.
Just over a year old, the Baltimore-based line Squidfire now boasts a whole range of goods hand-printed on manual presses with their original designs. In addition to Vans (actually hand-painted), messenger bags and a line for kids, they've recently introduced hoodies, like this "Workout" sweatshirt (pictured left, $45) that features overlapping images of a smiling 70's-era muscleman in red, blue and black on grey....
The world's first international news magazine on cotton, T-post is a subscription t-shirt service based in Sweden. Silkscreened onto American Apparel tees, subscribers get a new "issue" every six weeks with a design about a current news item on the outside and a short article on the topic printed inside. Many of the stories covered by T-post are outside the radar of the traditional...
Designed from pieces of hand-painted leather, these sexy men's-style dress shoes recently premiered at Neon's winter fashion show and bring action and color to any get-up. The Brazilian label's co-designer Dudu Bertholini has been collecting leftover painted cow skin—some of them rare—from his trips abroad to New York and throughout his home country, at last finding the best use for them. Because he only...
Two years ago Klaus Industries proclaimed that 2006 was the new 1984. While the fledgling experiment of democracy is still fledgling, the Portland, Oregon-based company has expanded their line of irreverent and humorous wears. Aside from an update on that particularly ominous theme, these hand-dyed printed shirts extol the tough-guy Abe Lincoln and the need for some domestic humanitarian intervention. “Our shirts are intended...
Western Massachussetts-basedTurn Nocturnal design studio is the brainchild of designer Matt McInerney and his good friend Jack Strong. Busting onto the scene a few months ago with their best selling font driven "Huge Type Looks Sweet" t-shirt ( still a favorite of mine) they've since followed up with a few others, their latest is "Turn The City and is available, along with Huge Type...
by Valery JosephThe designers behind Los Angeles-based Solid Gold Rags are sparing us the search for the perfectly worn-in t-shirt with a new line of beautifully tattered tees. Screen-prints of pop-culture icons—French singers and muses Françoise Hardy and Serge Gainsbourg front two of the collection's pieces—the almost criminally soft shirts. Co-founders Perry Shimon, and Oliver Kupperhe seek to create quietly personal, everyday pieces that...
The Pharos Project
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Ghostly Swim: Interview with Sam Valenti
Creative Index
Interview with Maarten Baas
A Paper Tiger
Von Totebags and T-Shirts
