With a new year well upon us and the t-shirts we’ve worn over the holiday period looking a little the worse for wear (and admittedly more than a little the worse for drinking) we have compiled a list of our top t-shirt websites for 2009. The list contains some old favourites and some you may not be aware of, but all have one thing in common – brilliantly designed tees. If you disagree with our choices or feel we’ve left a particularly good site off our list please let us know – we’re always on the lookout for new sites!

In no particular order then, our top t-shirt sites….

 

Threadless

An old favourite that has almost been around for a decade now! Their site was so successful they opened their first retail store in Chicago two years ago and their popularity continues to grow. Threadless works on a similar principal to laFraise but with the caveat that the designs are entered into competition are by a Threadless stable of more than 50 regular designers and the expert judging panel is made up of the masses – that’s right, anyone can vote for the design they like best. This ensures only the most popular designs go on to be made into actual products, and of course all winners are available from the Threadless store online New t-shirts are released weekly, ensuring a constant and fresh stream of designs for you to pick from.

 

 

 

laFraise

This France-based site operates on two simple principles, limited editions only and new designs every day. Which designs are available is decided by Europe’s biggest t-shirt design competition and with over 100 daily entries the competition is fierce, with the winning design manufactured and sold via the site for €15-25. The t-shirts on offer are therefore varied, there is no specific design ethos and it’s the eclectic nature of the site we love – as well as an inclination towards bright graphic designs. We’re also suckers for anything modelled by a giant gerbil, if the truth be told.

 

 

Tokyo Art Beat

Tokyo Art Beat aims to promote Japanese art and artists, and since its launch in 2004 TAB has given a voice to hundreds of artists who would otherwise have struggled to obtain coverage in traditional media or on the web. Each year TAB releases a collection of exclusive, limited-edition shirts made using designs donated by both famous and up-and-coming international artists living in Tokyo to share their love of the city. We love the quirky style and crisp colouring on tees that always manage to maintain a distinctly Asian flavour.

 

 

The Quiet Life

Based in LA, The QL has grown from producing a couple of designs a year to two full seasons with worldwide distribution. We like the website because not only does it offer all of the t-shirt designs in the range but occasionally offers special limited-edition designs exclusive to the site.

 

 

 

TeeFury

 A site with a unique selling point – its super-exclusivity. TeeFury sell one shirt on their site at any given time – just one design available at only $9. Each tee goes up for sale at midnight (Eastern time) and once it sells out or 24 hours are up (whichever comes first) that design is never sold again on the site. The designs vary and are produced by designers worldwide – for each tee sold they gain a commission and the great thing is, once the day is up the design reverts to the artist to do whatever they like with!

 

 

Mule Feed

Mule are a design company with a varied portfolio, which includes some great t-shirts available from their website. We love the simplistic designs and uncluttered graphics on their tees and the occasional sly pop culture references are also pretty cool. Anyone that likes The Wire, much less designs a t-shirt around a character from the show, is OK in our minds.

 

 

Fictive

An Australian company who in their own words ‘got tired of the mass-produced and unattractive range of t-shirts available’ so decided to set up their own range of limited run designs. The result is a range of innovative and stylish designs that are both desirable and accessible.

 

 

Spreadshirt

Spreadshirt is a German website that also allows you to create a design even if you have no previous experience and buy it as a one-off, or put it up for widespread sale. Its clever interface ensures that even if you are a total novice your design will look crisp and professional. So on the off-chance you don‘t find a design here you like you can remedy the situation immediately! The quality of designs on this site is very high, with an intuitive layout guiding users to popular designs and easy to recognise design categories such as music-based or humorous. Spreadshirt gained widespread recognition with articles on prestigious websites such as Marie Claire and CNN, and it is easy to see why they, like us, love the site.

 

 

 

The Ryde

A website born at Laguna Beach, California these products very much reflect the surfing nature of the city. We like these tees because, rather than create a brand around their passion for surfing and release bland products The Ryde’s artistic design styles are all inspired by the sport. Prices range from $12-24 for most t-shirts.

 

 

Split Reason

The number one online store for the increasingly mainstream ‘geek’ market, the designs on this site are accessible even to those who wouldn‘t know their joystick from their USB stick. We like this site for its blend of subtle humour that will appeal to the ‘geek’ market it professes to serve and its stylish designs that will entice any t-shirt enthusiast. Most t-shirts are available for under $20.

 

 

shirt.woot!

shirt.woot! operates on a similar basis to TeeFury in that a new exclusive t-shirt is added every day.  However, unlike Teefury you are given the option not just to look through archived designs and bemoan the cool tees you’ve missed out on but you can purchase them as well. Not all old designs are offered though, each Monday any shirt outside the top 20 sellers is axed from production forever.

 

 

Archie McPhee

Archie McPhee combines an intuitive website containing easy to navigate categories with some unique designs that we really like. Originally a novelty store selling rubber lizards and punching nuns (crazy the stuff some people will buy, huh?) Archie McPhee has since branched out into other areas. Their t-shirt designs retain the mischievous nature of their past though, and you do not have to look far to see where the inspiration for many of their designs comes from.

 

 

 

Fusilly

Based in Las Vegas, Fusilly offers t-shirts with the brash attention-grabbing style the city is renowned for. Employing a mix of satire and college humour in their designs, Fusilly’s t-shirts are sometimes offensive, sometimes edgy, but always witty.

 

 

Diesel Sweeties

Another t-shirt site that grew from a comic strip, this time one you might recognise from its syndication in national newspapers. Aside from what can only be an unhealthy obsession with bacon these designs have no real theme and are completely divorced from the comic (probably a good thing considering most of the plot revolves around relationships between robots and humans!). We particularly like this tee, which we’ve since seen while watching re-runs of ‘The IT Crowd’ on TV.

 

 

 

 

Deez Teez

The obligatory ‘offensive humour’ entry, if only because rude words never fail to make us smile and all of their t-shirts are modelled by, well, glamour models. This site offers all of the usual puns and innuendo on a t-shirt – what sets it apart are its low prices and vast selection. The ‘kids’ section is a little surprising on a site like this, but we reckon the more extreme designs are tongue-in-cheek and not really intended for purchase.

 

 

Howies

We usually shun big brand t-shirts, but of all of them we think Howies clings to the independent streak that made it successful in the first place best. Despite entering into business with clothing giant Timberland a little over two years ago, Howies still gives 1% of their turnover (or 10% of pre-tax profits, whichever is greater) to grass-root environmental and social projects. It also helps that Howies makes some great t-shirts – we particularly like the irony in this ‘big brand defector’ design.

 

 

Scary Go Round

SGR hosts one of our favourite webcomics, so when we discovered they also did t-shirts we were pretty excited! We’re glad that the humour present in the comics has not been lost in the (heat) transfer to tees.

 

 

David and Goliath

D&G (no, not that one) now has over 5,000 designs and manufactures hundreds of different products, but it is still their t-shirts we prize above all else. With a unique design style and irreverent style, D&G’s tees have featured in magazines such as Heat and Cosmo Girl. As you might have guessed from those two publications, D&G focussed on the girl market, but has now successfully branched out into the menswear sector with its trademark graphics and humour evident on all of their men’s t-shirts.

 

 

Crazy Dog T-Shirts

CrazyDog provide a massive range of funny and irreverent t-shirts, and with categories ranging from ‘retro’ to ‘novelty’ there’s something here for everyone.

 

 

A Better Tomorrow

Now, we weren’t very good at our German lessons in school so have absolutely no idea when this site was started or what, if anything, the company stands for. Except, that is, for innovative design printed onto quality t-shirts. Oh, and they seem to like their tea and cake. But then who doesn’t?

 

 

Red Bubble

Red Bubble is an open website where users can share their creations with any site visitor. Although the products aren’t limited to anything particular there is a thriving t-shirt section where you can occasionally unearth some real design gems. Quality is high because the site takes care of the actual manufacture of the t-shirt, all users have to do to sell is send off their designs and buyers will have access to their t-shirts.

 

 

 

Tonic Shirts

Tonic is an independent ethical clothing brand created by two designers in 2004. But we don’t particularly like them because they’re ethical – although they have gained attention for their organic clothing from media such as The Times, The Independent, Ecologist, Marie Claire and BBC’s ‘Inside Out’. No, we like them because their t-shirt designs are so consistently awesome.

 

 

UseSmallWords

We don’t usually recommend sites whose clothing has been created in a bid to raise money for charity as we find it almost always results in a shoddily designed tee that comes as a makeweight in return for a donation of some sort. However we love the way UseSmallWords have integrated literary quotes into their designs when nearly a third of their profit is dedicated to schooling illiterate children in disadvantaged areas such as Afghanistan. Our only real complaint is the limited number of designs on offer – we hope to see more added throughout the year guys!

 

 

 

Teenormous

Teenormous does the hard work so you don’t have to. Rather than having to use google and painstakingly sift through each mediocre t-shirt site Teenormous brings you the best of the web’s tees. Each shirt they find is catalogued and indexed so that you can search the site quickly and easily with rigorous criteria and they will find exactly what you’re looking for. The results you get from a Teenormous search are generated from all over the web, and you can visit any specific site if you like what you see from them or just buy their tee direct.

 

 

 

CafePress

The chances are if you’ve been using the internet to buy t-shirts you’ll already be pretty familiar with CafePress. It now has over 6,500,000 individual members and is the leader in user-generated commerce. With a thriving t-shirt section (more than 5 million designs on offer!) the chances are good you’ll always find something or someone you like.

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