It’s pretty weird how liberating and relaxing wearing these plain-fronted shirts has been!
Not weird because woah, it’s like, there are so many LOGOS on stuff now man, everything’s like so CORPORATE and shit, you know? In that ‘embroidered symbols on a polo shirt £25 for a t-shirt’ regard, “duh”. It’s weird because I don’t actually wear anything that’s house-of-garments branded like that. All of the graphics-shirts I own feature either:
- glam rock album covers
- characters from creator-owned properties I really like, or
- effectively, nonsense (that I like)
It’s not that I’ve been subconsciously oppressing my trooooo self under the weight of ouroboros marketing. That is what I think is weird. Despite visually expressing genuine facets of my character I still felt some kind of weighed down by the noise on my chest. Why do you think that is?
When I bought these shirts at 99p each I planned to DIY some images onto them, but that’s gone with the wind.
‘It’ (this state of wondering) may have some kind of synergy with this Hank Green song which I actually think for the most part – forgive my bluntness, and I’m talking lyrical argument not song-as-song – is bullshit. I appreciate (and 70% disagree with) the point he’s aiming for, but I was so irritated by the words and phrases he chose that I wrote a lyrical rejoinder and then threw it away because making a video where I do a song is.. not a thing I can be bothered to do.
HUWEFA: I do think that there’s a clear distinction (that can be blurred at will, but that exists) between dressing to express and writing precisely what you want to express UPON your clothing. Hank Green, for example, distances himself (without prejudice, I read his follow-up on tumblr and etc etc DFTBA) from “fashion” and “style” but favours the nerdy tee; he prefers to write whatever reference he approves of making either straight-up on his shirt with bald text and pictures, or sly and enigma-like upon his shirt with symbollically constructed in-jokes. Maybe it’s photo-realism vs expressionism. Or sculpture vs painting. Or something vs something. It’s two routes to get to a destination, and sometimes the destinations are the same but sometimes they’re different, and sometimes the routes overlap a whole lot, or blah blah blah whatever.
As much as people use them for the same, they are different, is what I am thinking. I am interested by the divide/intersection between the “graphics shirt” and the quest for “personal style”. I am interested by where prints come into all this; Sweet Lolita vs Hypersweet vs Classic?
