DSM-V

The Dover Street Market in London is a Comme des Garcons project that stocks curated merch for the ubercool. My favorite DSM wear are their playful heart-logo tees that feature some cute characters for your closet. Here are five of my favorites:

If I had the opportunity to wear one of these babies, I have a pretty good feeling that it would be a very self-hug kind of a day. Aren't they sweet? Something about their lack of mouths makes me love them even more.

Airbrush, With Greatness.

Ah, Jersey love.

The ridiculously enjoyable cheese and trash fest that is Jersey Shore is beyond satisfying for this Jersey Girl. I get a lot of flack for being from the nation's armpit, but I'm a proud Garden State citizen, and I love every unbelievably tacky, great thing about it--including it's Guiodos and Guidettes. Now, I could (if I were so inclined) upload a few pics here that would definitely prove that the Shore culture is nothing new, and that the Guidos have been running this state since I had a curling iron on perma-hot and stonewash wasn't ironic. Rather than risk ultimate embarrassment, I'm going to divert your attention to one of the more fantastic aspects of Jersey Shore culture: The airbrush tee.

If you are lucky, when you hit the boards at Seaside Heights, you'll stumble upon a shirtless brush master handcrafting a Jersey-tastic tee. Then, you think hard and come up with just what you want him to air pump onto cotton. The thing to remember is that beyond being stylin' the tee can be useful. You can profess your love for your mama, your guidette, ODB, or (my favorite) The Lady Gaga.

Junior loves you, Mama.


Nothing says forever in airbrush like dolphins.


Oh, ODB you are missed.






You can have your choice of Tony Montana odes.


You can have your company logo Jers-i-fied. How scared does that cow look? He's about to be processed!


Or, if you're me, you can get yourself a Gaga tee and rock it with all the pride of a real Jersey Girl who actually stayed in Shore houses before orange tans were all the pop rage. Yep.

How Do You Fold A Shirt?

Wanna fold a shirt shop-style? Click this:

See, just like that!
This made me laugh too hard.
Link courtesy of SomersetHouse's Tweet! Follow them.

Twice As Nice.

I'm on a running mission to congratulate The Face Hunter every time he scores a double: A pretty face wearing a pretty face. This time I think I shall award some extra credit for the presence of boobs.



I want a tee with teets on it. Good things come in pairs! On a more sophisticated note, it's kind of amazing how the washy colors of the shirtdress match the sunset (or sunrise? Most hunters find their prey in the wee hours...) in the sky. Nice work, Hunter!

You Feel So Good Upon My Lips...

My friend Rahul Sharma is the blogger behind Rahul Owns Your Soul. He's the most amazing miner of cultural excellence from the sludge of the mainstream and he's deemed this newish ditty from Basement Jaxx one of his songs of the summer.



I couldn't agree with him more, and I can't stop rocking out to this song. Now that we finally have sunshine in our lives again (did you know average rainfall for the month of June is 3" and we had 10"!) this song is a sweet, bright ode to love and not a reminder of weather patterns. Makes me want a Ronald Wigman raindrop tee...

(Click it to get it.)

Model Tee

Artist Dana Veraldi of DEERDANA does my inner fashion geek good. She draws caricatures of fashion's most phenomenal characters (Bill Cunningham, Andre Leon Talley, Hamish Bowles) and even models like Agyness Deyn and prints them on tees and totes. I totes love them.

That's Alber Elbaz, Mr. Bowles, Bill "Snappy" Cunningham, St. Yves, Purple Olivier, and Tentastic ALT. Click 'em to get 'em.

Dot Dash.

I'm a purist and usually get peeved when the Google search engine deviates from its standard design or typeface, but today's Morse Code birthday celebration format of dots and dashes is quite alright with this coded girl. You love Morse Code too? Well, check this out!
You can create a tee or hoodie with some dots and dashes of your own.

Over on the Primitive State site you get up to 10 characters to express yourself in code. I say put "Single" or "... .. -. --. .-.. ." on the front and geek out with your soulmate when he or she rushes to get your number. Just a suggestion. You can use your ten characters any way you -.. .- -- -. well please. In fact I bet you can say things like ..-. ..- -.-. -.-, ... .... .. -, and maybe even .. / .-.. --- ...- . / -.-- --- ..- and no one would even know the difference, except your soul mate and some pilots.

Boobs on a Tee.

It fascinates me that the sight of bare breasts is still so incendiary in our culture. Men have nipples and they show them. Women have nipples and they can't show them without being summoned to court. In New York you can get 15 days in jail for showing your unclothed "private or intimate parts" and for those of us with the double XX chromosome, those parts include "that portion of the breast which is below the top of the areola". Now, I don't care to show my own personal areolae in public (or necessarily to see a lot of public displays of others' aerolae), but the feminist in me fully defends a female's right to show her no-no parts if she wants to, just like any shirtless basketball-in-the-park-playing dude. Equal rights, baby. For now, rather than risking slammer time, I suggest pushing the system's buttons with t-shirts of naked boobs. Here's a few I'm fond of:

Radical anatomy + goofy tees = civilly disobedient fun. Try it! Click a pic to get yourself a boob shirt. Do it! Ok, ok. I'll settle down now.

Teach Shirts

It's time to get wild like they did back in the day.

The creators of Emperial Nation clothing are out to prove that you are never too cool to get schooled. In fact, they'll school you and make you cool(er) all at once. Started by a team of business-minded streetart buffs, the company takes inspiration for its graphic tee designs from the annals of history. Their collections are organized like history books. Topics include the Civil War, Harlem Renaissance, and the French Revolution. The rebel spirit is alive and well in their subject matter, so there's no need to worry about boring your friends with your dusty old lessons. There are plenty of gun-toting revolutionaries, rise-up types, and system stompers on the tees to keep things lively.

Tees featuring Five Points founder Paul Kelly (l) and Civil War soldier Andrew Benton (r).

Fraterni-tee: a print of Alpha Phi Alpha.

A healthy respect for the past is an important asset at any time, but our knowledge of history is usually used as a way to keep things from repeating again and again. In these times Emperial Nation's historical tees can be seen as sartorial calls to action. Need some inspiration to fight the good fight? Look down at your chest and see a portrait of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first African American inter-collegiate fraternity who formed to fight racial discrimination at Cornell Univeristy in 1906. Need to do tough battle with someone or something? Check your chest and get a glimpse of Civil War soldier Andrew Benton. Feel like going gangster on someone (figuratively of course)? Wear your mugshot tee featuring a cop-captured portrait of Paul Kelly, who founded the Five Points Gang and ran New York City until the fuzz caught up with him. Maybe a mugshot tee isn't the most positive place to get inspiration for action, but it certainly is badass and when the cookies are crumbling all over, who doesn't want to feel a little badass? As long as you keep the violent tendencies to the front of your shirt, it's all good. Besides, maybe Kelly's mug will deter people from messing with you, then it's definitiely all good. You want your own histor-tee, don't you? Visit the Emperial Nation website and scope their stuff. Priced at $37 to $41 they can be a reasonable, historical investment in your future.

Mine too...

When I was five I wanted to be Madonna's best friend, accepting payment in lace gloves and rubber bracelets only. That, or I wanted to finger paint professionally. Seeing as we're in the middle of financial Armageddon, maybe I could get back to those childhood dreams. I hear the Objective section of my resume calling...

Click the shirt to get one of your own from TypeTees.com.

Good To The Last Drop

Today is Jackson Pollock's birthday. He's the guy who splattered, dripped, dropped, drizzled, and poured latex house paint onto canvases and revolutionized painting. He's the one who poked people with a painting stick and made them wonder why this simple, nearly silly idea was making them feel so funny about the world. To celebrate the late, grate get yourself a cool-as-anything girlie tee with Pollock's likeness and splatterness printed on the front from Herman Lee over on Threadless.com.

Supplies are extremely limited (maybe the artist can be coaxed into another printing round??) so hurry. If you can't get a tee, you can still get a little Pollock fix. Watch him do his thing:

Want to another way to celebrate? Get your own Pollock on and drop some virtual paint onto a virtual canvas. Fun.

Get Schooled: Stencil Your Own Tees

This won't be the easiest thing you ever do, but I'm thinking it may be the coolest. Yes, the coolest thing that you ever do. Let street artist Gigantic help you up your cred by teaching you how to stencil your own tees.

Listen, times are tough. You need to beef up that resume. How impressive will it be to employers that you can stencil them a t-shirt, any t-shirt? Very, very impressive. Now get to work!

I Dream of Silver Foxes

A weird mixture of decongestant and the recent viewing of this video



(thanks Rahul) led me to have a dream in which Anderson Cooper invited me to be his one and only guest to a week long Barbra Streisand convention in Kentucky. As much as I heart Anderson, the jury is still out on whether this was a good dream or not. Either way, I now feel an overwhelming desire to get myself one of these:

Click the image to get yourself one at Baostudio's Etsy Shop.

Kiss This Shirt.

Mmmm. Kissing is a little bit of earthly heaven. T-shirts of kissing are definitely on my wanted list. This one says "I _ _ _ _ you." Wear it out tonight and let someone else fill in the blanks. Sounds like fun. This T-shirt was designed by Simon Massey di Vallazza. He has a site and a rockin' Flickr page. His illustrations are super-cool and the scans he's posted of his sketchbooks make me happy.

You _ _ _ _ a t-shirt of your own? Email Simon and ask him how to get one:
simon@smv-design.com.

All images from www.smv-design.com.

Advanced Screening

Silk screening is an elevated art form and Reckon does it well. They print popstars, philosophers, comedians, and artists onto totes, tees, tot clothes, and pillows for under $30.





Click any of the images for details on how to snag em.