We’re having a language issue in the office right now. Not sure why, but every T-shirt that we pick is spelt differently in the UK and the USA. This one has an a in the UK but not in the USA but the really odd thing about it is that both of us have syn(a)esthesia. So we both want this T-shirt.

Designed by The Stray, it features the most common form of the condition, which is where music has colours for the hearer. Other forms of the condition mean that days of the week or numbers have colours or that people see sounds or hear colours. Weird, right?

Anyway, this is tee is a great example of making a concept concrete. The use of shape and colour and the stylised images that convey a sense rather than simply a visual are perfectly combined. If the colours came out of a iPhone, for example, you wouldn’t get the idea that the music is causing the neurological expression of the brain so easily. It’s the old school gramophone that makes the viewer step back from the pretty picture and think about what’s actually being expressed.

Also worth noting is that this is the first time I have ever picked a T-shirt with a sequin effect on it – and almost certainly the last. And that The Stray has possibly the best email address in the world. If you want to show your love you can email him on kissmyaesthetic@gmail.com

On the downside, the shipping from the US to here is $9, which feels a bit steep for a T-shirt that’s actually beautifully priced right now at just $15. There’s an end of summer sale at Design by Humans which means you can grab some bargains if you’re US based.

Post by Mikey who gets colours when he hears music and headaches when he hears pop music …

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Well, come on people! You might be hiding your copy behind some other cover, but we’re all reading it, right?

And Hot Topic have the most beautiful tee-shirt to celebrate the release of the third book in the trilogy – it’s got a brilliant mockingjay picture on the front and the ‘down with the capitol’ slogan on the back. At just $22.00 it would be a steal anyway, but the current offer from Hot Topic is sweet: Buy Any Novelty Tee, Get The 2nd 1/2 Off!
So seriously, buy one, or two.

Post by Kay who would’ve gone to a midnight Mockingjay party except she was scared she’d be the oldest one there …

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Is it winter where you are?

Because as I look out of my window today, London is full of black umbrellas and women wearing boots. Not that I have a problem with boot-wearing women, you understand but wtf happened to the sunshine?

Anyway when the weather is shite, you need a T-shirt that livens things up, and this Terratogs offering does the job perfectly. It’s an anti-retro splash of colour (see that U in there? Where it belongs? Okay then) with a blazing laser theme that cuts through even the gloomiest London August. At £14.99 it’s a steal too. But don’t steal it, okay, because that’s sad behaviour and not what we’re advocating.

Post by Mikey who just microwaved a Pimms because he needed the warmth …

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The sound you can hear is screaming – transatlantic screaming – it’s Mikey, who has a problem with color – he thinks it should have a U in it. Yeah right.

Anyway, this T-shirt from Ardentees is one of those tees that’s more than it looks – these are tees that might change the future. Ardentees say they collaborate with ‘the wave of creative talents yet untapped’ which sounds a bit like a line from Point Break, but let it go, their point is to develop properly experimental T-shirt design and textile art. I can get behind that.

Also, every year in fall, I take an art class. I am not good at art, but I know that trying to create helps improve my ability to discern good design, and the colors in this tee just feel like the most exciting art I ever did as a kid, when painting was fun and I had no hang-ups about the quality of what I produced. Speaking of quality – an issue with the photos on the Ardentees shop page – you can’t see the beautiful eyes that gaze out of this T-shirt on the gallery page, yet they’re perfectly shown on the splash page. WTF?

The artist who’s produced the quality here is Bulgarian Dimo Trifonov who’s been a graffiti artist, DJ and a traditional artist and who says he is ‘inspired by the simplest of things. I try to find the complication in them, for example picking a subject or object and to go as deep as I can into it before presenting it as an outlet of my thoughts’ – I like that. And the T-shirt is about how color lives in us which is a brilliant concept for a T-shirt reviewer.

Post by Kay, who’s sort of cyan today …

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So, Charles Taylor has been on trial for three years, and most of us only get to hear about it when Naomi Campbell and Mia Farrow got into a barney about whether Naomi knew where her ‘dirty stones’ came from.

Well, LastDays were way ahead of us. Their Blood diamond tee is a fantastic contribution to the debate, showing exactly what conflict diamonds actually are. LastDays aren’t just on the side of the good guys, they are the good guys – they are out to change the fashion industry by using certified organic and natural and/or sustainable fabrics, they create their clothing lines without harmful chemicals that can damage the worker and stay in the products and put the wearer’s health at risk too and they partner only with manufactures that support and promote good labour practices. Okay, it’s $35 for a T-shirt, but compared to a civil war and genocide, it’s worth it, right?

Post by Mikey who dislikes all blood sports, actually …

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I’m between Mmmm and meh on the new Excess Is Ok collection.

Meh is the Excess Is Ok teeshirt and the Beauty and the Beast one for their squareness (that’s design square, not cool, hip, Beatnik type square) – would have really liked to see these with a less rigid shape: the little corner wiggle on Beauty isn’t quite enough to win me over.

On the other hand, the sublime Oil Lady is like liquid gold on your T-shirt. It’s sinuously designed, beautifully subtle in colorways and totally topical.

It’s my feeling that this is going to be a classic T-shirt , not just because it’s a commentary on what’s going to be the biggest story of 2010 here in the USA, but because it’s simply a perfect marriage of form, function and current events. Altogether now … mmmmm!

Post by Kay who is hearting the heat

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Saw a mate wearing one of the Sutsu T-shirts that has a kind of mobius rainbow job on it, and was impressed by the quality of the tee. When I went to have a look at their site though, the T-shirt that more impressed me was this baby.

When I was a little kid and it rained, we used to sit in the school hall and listen to Peter and the Wolf – not the version with Sting in it, the other one, on a record, vintage stuff! There’s a bit where the wolf swallows a duck and this T-shirt makes me think of that for some reason. I think it could be the simplicity of the design, or the very clear visual sense given of the birds singing, but whatever, it dredged up a quality moment from the past for me, which is reason enough to celebrate the T-shirt.

About a year later we moved to another town where on rainy days we sat in the school hall and bigger kids beat us up for our dinner money.

So, this one sets you back £25 which is not of the cheapest, but Sutsu seem like good people and they do stick to their aim of making design driven clothing that uses sustainable or organic materials and within Fairtrade regulations as much as they can, which is an honest and decent way to proceed. Bet they never beat up a little kid for money …

Post by Mikey who has always felt sorry for ducks …

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I’ll tell you a really shameful secret. That song from the Jungle Book, ‘I wanna be like you’ – sung by the king of the apes? It was only like a year ago that I found out that it wasn’t Louis Armstrong who sang it – it was Louis Prima.

All my life I thought it was Louis Armstrong. How sad is that?

So anyway – this is a swinging T-shirt (not in the sexual sense, you understand, because that would be creepy) and if you buy it, the founder of Omunky, Rick Waters, will donate 5% of the purchase price to WildAid. Which is a great thing, I think.

It’s printed on a 100% organic cotton blank, in a pale blue, and you should cool to cold-wash it to keep the T-shirt as beautiful as possible for as long as possible.

There’s a lovely summery vibe to this top: something jungly and innocent about the design, and if you wear it, and people ask you about it, you can tell them all about how your fashion sense is helping to conserve animals in the wild, and also you can just check that they know which Louis sang the song in the Jungle Book because it’s terrible to go through your whole life with the wrong name attached to an ear-worm.

Post by Kay who likes monkeys, and apes, and Louis Armstrong and Louis Prima too …

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Simplified dropped us a line to say they’ve revamped their website so I went to have a look at their T-shirts.

This one is still pleasing me after I reviewed it in black many months ago – it pleases me enough for me be looking at the cranberry option again. There aren’t that many T-shirts that make good use of the female form, rather than trying to disguise its natural shape, but this is one of them. It breaks all the rules about what women should wear to look good:

1. It has bigger bands at the bottom (widening)

2. It has horizontal stripes (fattening)

3. It’s white on a dark background (makes the eye focus on width).

But it works – it really works! It’s a simple, rule-breaking T-shirt that looks fantastic whether you’re buff or … frankly chubby.

Simplifed do say that this tank is on the skinny side, so you should order up a size from your usual fit.

Post by Kay who’s wondering if Mikey actually sneaked off to South Africa after all …

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I do love the Ript concept, and most days I start my T-Shirt quest by nipping over there to see what’s on offer. It’s not that often that I think something is good enough to bring to the Teejunkie party though, so today is a special day.

Thrash Nasty’s ‘I See You’ tee is pretty cool. The colorways are perfect for this hot and sticky weather, and the detailing is pretty amazing too. Sometimes this kind of teeshirt doesn’t work so well for both the male and female form, but this one has a graphic that’s fitting very well on the squarer male shape as well as the female model’s more curvaceous build.

Best thing of all about Ript is the price. $10. Buy it today or lose it forever (or at least until it comes back as a Ript classic at some unknown future date) this 24 hour offer is hot, hot, hot!

Post by Kay who is sweltering, people, sweltering …!

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