This is one of the most disturbing videos we’ve seen for a long time. Well, not a (nsfw) video, an installation at the new Hood By Air pop up shop in LA. Shayne Oliver has a seriously weird side to his nature, as shown by the Morph video, but also a strong line of gender deconstructed clothing.

The New York vibe doesn’t work for everyone, and you have to be pretty full on to carry the look, as shown by Oliver’s models who vary from grunge to goth to outright Manson, but after a couple of years where the line disappeared due to sourcing problems (manufacturing was being done in Dominica) the resurgence of this powerful upscale casual line can only be good news. If you think you see Helmut Lang influences in there, you’re not wrong btw.

And there’s no shop where you can get this stuff btw – unless you are able to get to the HBA/Scion shop in LA. Price – massive!

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Kathryn Pickering’s designs aim to be ‘designer T-shirts at affordable prices’ and we’re all in favour of that approach at teejunkie.com. Really nice to see a designer being very clear about their own inspiration and methodology rather than writing some bonkers waffle – Kathryn says her work does draw on the TV series Mad Men and she looked at motifs like cigarettes, floral print dresses etc and then created freehand drawings which she turned into placement collage prints which were, in turn, digitally printed onto both unisex and women’s T-shirts. The blanks themselves are Tensel (bamboo fabric) which is reckoned to be more sustainable to produce than cotton, it’s also quite different to wear, so be aware of that.

Kathryn also gets top marks from me for modelling her own tanks, for giving both the male model and the photographer a nice big credit and for showing how to personalise her T-shirts by hacking the sleeves off one for the model to wear. £25, not a snip but not a fortune either.

Post by Mikey who cannot wait to start rolling his sleeves up (or at least leaving his vest off …)

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These tees have only just come online and we’re indebted again to Andy at Hide Your Arms for tipping us off to them. We like Akomplice, they’re a fantastic bunch of right minded people and their spring line is another example of how they over-offer to their marketplace. It’s a total smorgasbord of interesting stuff, such as the snapback caps which are very impressive.

Maybe our fave item from Akomplice is in the exclusives range, namely the unbelievably stylish laptop bag in brown leather for $80 but we’re a teeshirt review site not a Louis Vuitton appreciation society so we’re just going to urge you to go lust over it for yourselves. Seriously, it’s a total work of art and if we could make it de rigeur for every Armani wearing suit and boot type, we would.

$32 for this gently anarchic Where’s Wally T-shirt is quite a bargain, in our minds, and for the thrifty minded among you, just getting a pocket on a T-shirt is something of a big deal, so we recommend it highly to you, dear readers.

Post by Kay (and Mikey) for once both singing from the same hymn book …!

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Well, it’s going to be a great year for movies! Into Darkness looks awesome and we are all queued up for our cosplay attendance, but what about T-shirts for those who don’t want to do the full Spock, Kirk or Uhuru?

Top place is going to Juan Ortiz, one of our favorite designers whose rendering of The City on the Edge of Foreve episode is truly magnificent. If the profile looks familiar it’s British actress Joan Collins who starred in this episode, which aired in 1967.

It’s a highly acclaimed storyline, written by scifi genius Harlan Ellison, which treats the Butterfly Effect temporal disturbance theory as a romance – Kirk falls in love with a woman who must die if the future is to develop as it should … aaah.   Isn’t that sweet? $25 dollars gets you this beauty!

Well, many think the original series was the best, and that’s why the prequel movies have been such a hit, so what about a pre-prequel tee? This beauty from tshirtlaundry is a steampunk pre-pre-prequel to Star Trek, Steamship Enterprise – nicely rendered and a sweet homage, it also comes at the sweet prices of $18.00 plus shipping.

It may not be the most exciting T-shirt you’ll ever see, but at that price it’s a snip and it will get you a few admiring glances from the many cutout cosplayer attending in their amber command tunics and Klingon masks. What makes it great is that this is a T-shirt you can continue to wear throughout the year, which is not true for cosplay, unless you live somewhere very strange indeed!

Finally, for those who do insist on cosplay, and what’s wrong with that(?) we have a suggestion to make you drool.

The Roddenberry site has something pretty special, special enough to make it into third place in our top three – for $29.95 you get the real (imitation) long sleeved black tunic worn by James T Kirk before he became Captain. The insignia aren’t screen or discharge ink printed, they are actually apparel film heat-pressed into place. Very cool.

Post by Kay who veers between the Borg and Uhuru, personally speaking. . .

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Coming soon to a T-shirt cartel near you …

Hearts of Kings are hit and miss for me. Sometimes I find their imagery too simplistic. This shirt is an example of what they do best. It’s featured in their new look book, where it’s even more stunning than it is in their store, and the message it carries could easily be controversial so this isn’t a garment choice for the fainthearted. However, if you’re willing to argue your corner with any random who gets into it with you, maybe this is going to be your summer fave.

According to Hearts of Kings, this is not about fighting the police … Really? No, it’s about battling against [the] ‘power that is telling you to give up, you can’t do it, or you’ve reached your limitations… It’s about fighting against any and all injustices.’ And then HoK tell us that Public Enemy’s bass player Brian Hardgrove said it best, “Law enforcement is necessary. Fight The Power is not about fighting authority – it’s not that at all. It’s about fighting abuse of power.”

Ahem. That’s Hardgroove, guys.

Still, it’s a great T-shirt for $28.

Post by Mikey who thinks of the police as wearing pointy hats and saying ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello …

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Well, not actually see. Not exactly see … Wish we could. But I’ll get to that.

Thor and Iron Man 3 in the same week? Awesome. But the Thor trailer was just a teaser and Iron Man is actually with us, so what’s out there, T-shirt wise, for the Tony Stark wannabe?

Well, it’s not too bad. Our outright winner is the ThinkGeek Iron Man 3 Arc Reactor Shirt which for $29.99 is a good deal. The non-ironic write up is just great:

•    Officially licensed Marvel collectible
•    Black cotton t-shirt containing a light-up Arc Reactor
•    Modeled after the Arc Reactor in Iron Man 3
•    Flexible interior with knitted cotton exterior
•    Provides protection from adverse weather, UV rays, and temperature extremes
•    With fresh batteries in the battery box, Arc Reactor will glow when switched on
•    Will not prevent shrapnel from reaching your heart
•    Machine washable (all electrical components can be removed from the shirt)
•    Requires 3 AAA batteries (not included).

In runner up place, MyTeeSpot has a sweet garment for $19.99 on a sheer T-shirt that has a super-slim fit (like body armor!) which works really well with this retro-styled graphic, perfectly styled for purpose – you can imagine it stencilled on a crate or sprayed onto a cargo container … cool!

And that weird merchandise? Well The Hindu Times reports that Wipro Glucovita (that’s a glucose drink, for those who don’t know) are giving away Iron Man tiffin boxes. Yes, tiffin boxes. Doesn’t the mere idea make your heart sing?

Despite scouring the web and emailing Wipro, we haven’t been able to find a single image of this great merch initiative but we’ll keep looking. And yes, exciting as it sounds, the tiffin box is just a lunch box – but an Indian lunch box, with Iron Man on, which makes all the difference!

Post by Kay who had a Power Rangers lunch box when she was twenty-four . . .

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Well, the Thor: The Dark World trailer’s out and it’s awesome! Seriously heavy stuff, especially Loki looking like the rehab reject of an ‘80s hair rock band.

I’m still not thrilled with the hammer but hey, you can’t have everything. Mikey and I did a quick trawl to find some shirts that would keep us going until release date (October, can you believe it? That’s so far away!) and having waded through the usual dreck, much of it unlicensed Marvel imagery that’s been shoddily photo-shopped, we came up with three beauties that aren’t your usual merch.

The first is … well, it’s philosophical. Or do I mean spiritual? Or anti-spiritual? Anyway, it’s from The Secular Store which I don’t think I’ve ever browsed before but there’s some interesting stuff over there, although it’s all slogan-based T-shirts. So, for $25 and postage, a T-shirt in pink, which is kind of counter-intuitive for The Mighty Thor (but actually who knows? He might be a pink onesie guy in his off-shift hours) and really rather cute. I like the hammer here – that’s more like the right shape for a hammer.

Our second find is highly stylized and all the better for it. This is from EtchGear, another site I’ve never come across before but that I’ll be visiting again. This Florida-based partnership between some kind of business entrepreneur and a designer who also happens to be a mother (why do women mention that? Just wondering, men never do) has a nice line in very crisp imagery. The only thing I’m not sure about with this one is the colorway – the Royal blue blank is okay but I feel something a little darker would have worked better – either navy or charcoal would have given this T-shirt an extra level of grimness for me.

At $25 plus postage I think this is a really good tee and I’m pretty sure you’re going to get asked about it a lot and in admiring terms too.

EtchGear have a distinctive vibe to their garments which is refreshing – I think we’re going to be visiting them again.

Our top pick for the day is also our cheapest tee-shirt – it’s amazing how often this happens. So for $20.00 you get this Hanes Nano (read down on the spec, as this T has been changed from the photographed image) with this awesome, awesome design.

It’s intricate, it’s heavy, and it has the clever kind of referencing of the Norse mythos that will comfortably rule out any engagement with the preposterous idiots who saw the first film, have never picked up a comic in their lives and have just enough brain capacity to know that the blond guy with the hammer is Thor but not enough to know that they shouldn’t engage Thor fans in banal conversation about their chosen superhero. Phew, need to pause for breath there. But anyway, this is a HAMMER – well done Burlyshirts for pulling this out of the bag!

Post by Kay who can remember when Hammertime involved an MC . . .

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This Smoking Deer T-shirt is quite weird. It’s part of the outgrowth of the Jon Wye empire which began with belt fashion – I kid you not – and extended into T-shirt design. A Washington based and US-centric brand, Jon Wye is one of those smallish maverick outfits that really bring out the best in a culture’s influences.

For this teeshirt it’s the link between hunting and the American psyche – it’s a big ugly question that I don’t want to get into right now, but all the references are obvious enough for me not to belabour it.

And this $29.00 organic cotton T-shirt is just beautifully made, really well-crafted, when Jon Wye say it’s a workshop created garment, that’s exactly what they mean, it feels and looks like a craftsman-produced item.

So whatever you think about smoking, or about deer hunting, or American culture generally, this seems like a good day to be commemorating the paradoxes inherent in our cousins over the water.

Post by Mikey who wants a Zombies in the Wild West Jon Wye belt more than he can say …

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Really nice article at FearNet brought me back to a great T-shirt from enclothe which, to my joy, has had a revamp! Oh yes!

The original 451 design was awesome. Not cool, obviously, because that would be ironic but awesome, and then made even more awesome by the addition of the salamander that sits on the back shoulder of the shirt, giving it a neat obverse/reverse image.

The book Fahrenheit 451 is by the awesome and very cool Ray Bradbury, possibly the most underrated writer of his generation, and the title refers to the temperature at which books burn. That’s all I’m going to say, except it’s a really skinny book, and if you haven’t read it, then do it.

Just $21 for this excellently referential shirt, with its red and yellow design. Make your own heatwave!

Post by Mikey who’d planned to write about the Beautiful Game but … you know what happened this week, don’t you?

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Really nice article at FearNet brought me back to a great T-shirt from enclothe which, to my joy, has had a revamp! Oh yes!

The original 451 design was awesome. Not cool, obviously, because that would be ironic but awesome, and then made even more awesome by the addition of the salamander that sits on the back shoulder of the shirt, giving it a neat obverse/reverse image.

The book Fahrenheit 451 is by the awesome and very cool Ray Bradbury, possibly the most underrated writer of his generation, and the title refers to the temperature at which books burn. That’s all I’m going to say, except it’s a really skinny book, and if you haven’t read it, then do it.

Just $21 for this excellently referential shirt, with its red and yellow design. Make your own heatwave!

Post by Mikey who’d planned to write about the Beautiful Game but … you know what happened this week, don’t you?

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