Preshrunk

Now, I know some of you aren't too hip on printing on the back of a shirt. To be perfectly honest, I'm really not into it either. But in this case, it brings the whole tee together...

If you're as much of a Big Lebowski as I am, you'll probably dig this Achiever shirt from the dudes at Lebowski Fest. If you don't, pour yourself a white russian, put on some Creedence and chill. Maybe that'll put you in the right headspace. But if you do all that and you still don't like it, fuck it.

$12.00 | Credit | URL

When I was in 4th and 5th grade, we used to get an hour a week in our school's computer lab. Every week we'd arrive to three dozen Apple IIs loaded with Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail.

Ah, Oregon Trail... The bane of my existence. I spent three arduous weeks trying to circumnavigate the Columbia River. After that, I spent six weeks trying to hunt enough buffalo to feed my party. All the while my party kept dying of dysentery and cholera. It took me five months to beat that goddamn game, but I loved it.

Since I like to show off my scars and broadcast my shortcomings, I adore Busted Tees' "You Have Died Of Dysentery" shirt. It reminds me of swing sets, pizza day in the cafeteria, cub scouts and kickball. Besides, what's not to love about a shirt that basically says "you died from a bad case of the shits"?

$17.99 | Credit | URL

About a month ago Jason Kottke dropped out of the 9-5 game to do his weblog as a full time job. With the support of close to 700 people [which he has dubbed "micropatrons"] in the first month, we assume that he's off to a good start.

Jason was nice enough to set aside a few minutes to help us launch our latest irregular feature, "What's In Your Closet?" Yeah, we loved Gizmodo's "What's In Your Gadget Bag" so much that we had to make it our own. So without further adieu, let's take a look at some of J.Ko's favorite tees...

Flowers In The Attic

The version I have isn't pictured on the site, but it's red on red, which makes the design somewhat hard to see unless you're really looking hard at it in good light. That cuts down on the casual on-the-street mortification which is good because people usually don't react very well when they realize I'm wearing a tshirt picturing a little girl blowing her head off with a pistol. I've worn this shirt twice now when going through security at the airport and have gotten no comment either time, a lucky streak which I will try not to push to three.

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Design is a Good Idea

Classic shirt from Emigre. I've had mine forever now, probably 8 years or so, and I still wear it often. I don't know what brand of shirt and printing process they used, but I wish all my shirts held up this well...unless you look closely, you can barely tell it's been worn.

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Oral-B

This is a sentimental favorite, given to me by an old girlfriend of mine. It's an employee shirt from the Oral-B factory in Iowa City, probably purchased from a Goodwill or Salvation Army. I don't wear this one very often because the fabric is so thin (but soft!) that I'm afraid it's going to dissolve in a stiff wind one day.

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Wow, man... All of those were very choice tees. Then again, they're also totally sold out or hard to come by. Way to induce t-shirt lust, Kottke. On the flip side, thanks for helping us get this new feature off the ground. Mad respect to you.

+ Did you actually like the Brixwear 1000? I thought it was clever, but I'd never be caught dead wearing one. The idea of attaching an mp3 player to my shirt wasn't all that appealing to me. But what do I know? The Brixwear sold out its run of 300 shirts in 18 minutes flat.

Naturally, PodBrix was quick to market with another shirt utilizing the same technology, the PodShirt. But while the Brixwear managed to look sort of cute, the PodShirt looks hideous and thrown together. I recommend they go back to the drawing board and design something that actually looks, oh I dunno, wearable.

+ Much love to Brian and Jen for mentioning Preshrunk on their Podcast, She Said, He Said. The mention is around the 24:45 mark on their March 23rd entry. It's times like these where I really wish that I could link a specific section of a Podcast. C'est la vie.

There's no way you're going to be able to make a high quality four color shirt by using this process. But if you want to step up from stenciling, this is probably the way to go.

What's really ingenious about this method is it requires very little other than some glue, an embroidery hoop, some sheer nylons and screen printers ink. I swear man, some of these kids on LiveJournal are too crafty for their own good.

As always, we advise you try this method on an unloved t-shirt that you picked up at a thrift store before attempting to screen a fresh, blank tee.

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Alex from Death Attack has got a big old pair of balls. He's got a tee that's envisioned Mickey Mouse as a happy go lucky suicide bomber, complete with blood dripping off his hands and a turban. It's as powerful an image as it is ammusingly stupid, but it's still punk as fuck.

At $10.00 a shirt, we suggest you buy two before Disney gives him a smack on the back of the hands.

$10.00 | PayPal | URL

Sometimes I wonder if Anarchists ever get tired of wearing black. I mean, I do. Even if it does go with everything, it can get a bit monotonous to wear.

So if you want to overthrow the system while looking fashionable, Proletarian Threads has got your back. They've got a whole fleet of colorful, politically tinged shirts on fitted tees. My favorite has to be Anarchy Is For Lovers, even if the design is so emo that it hurts.

P.S. I'm sure there's a joke that I can do about Anarchists selling shirts, but I won't crack it.

$14.99 | PayPal | URL

The horribly named Brixwear 1000 from PodBrix is a limited edition tee that's got an interesting feature... A magnetic iPod Shuffle holder. So basically, it looks like the little Lego minifig on the shirt is holding your shuffle.

While the idea and implementation are cute, the shirt is really not my cup of tea. But since close to 20% of our audience are Apple users, I figured a few of y'all might get a kick out of it.

They go on sale tonight [03.21.05] at 9PM EST and have been limited to a batch of 300. Most of their other limited edition items have gone pretty fast, so get it while it's hot.

Update: Sold out in 18 minutes. Damn, yo.

$28.99 | PayPal | URL [via]

We don't feature a lot of white shirts around here, but we're going to make an exception. You see, we have a bit of a soft spot for Devo and this tee makes our inner mutant smile.

We've often asked ourselves "What Would Devo Do?" when confronted with a tough situation. Unfortunately, the only answer we've ever been able to come up with is, "wear tyvek suits and flowepot hats" or "whip it good" which is hardly useful in a crisis. Unless you're Indiana Jones, that is...

$12.00 | Credit | URL [via]

+ It always seems like Threadless is having some sort of special sale. We've been sleeping on this one all week, but every one of their shirts are $10 until Monday.

+ Speaking of Threadless, remember the Goatse design that we were so batty over? Well, there's one for sale...

I hope to dear god that these are going to be mass produced and sold somewhere other than eBay.

+ If any of you del.icio.us users see a tee you like in the wild, tag it with "preshrunk". We'll try to use, just so long as we actually like it. After all, taste is subjective.