Preshrunk

If you've read the site long enough you'd know that I'm a sucker for nice, simple line art. But sometimes I tire of the calculated perfection of vectors in Illustrator files. Fortunately, Slow Shirts slings loads of gear emblazoned with all kinds of beautifully imperfect, hand drawn line art.

As much as I love the calculated perfection of Kraftwerk, there's something to be said for the crunchy, imperfect rock of The White Stripes... You feel me?

There are some shirts that you're bound to dig more, but the Powerlines artwork sort of spoke to me. Maybe you'll find something that speaks to you.

$22.00 | Credit | URL

Y'know, it's been a while since I've thrown our readers in Europe a bone... So here's a little number from the fine folks at Dadawan, a French web store with outstanding tees and accessories from a variety of artists.

This tee was designed by none other than super prolific street artist/toy designer/illustrator/web designer KOADZN. It may be a bit busy for some people, but believe me when I say that the level of detail in the artwork requires such a busy design. If you're a fan of graffiti, do yourself a favor and give this shirt a look. You'll thank me later.

24.21€ | Credit | URL

It may not be able to get you into any of the hot eateries and nightclubs in a large metro area, but being internet famous rules. You have the relative privacy of an average Joe coupled with a devoted, cult-like following. Perfect strangers who will buy you beers and let you crash on their couch when you're in town. The pay may not be great, but the money shouldn't matter when you've got the adoration of dozens. Especially if a few of those dozens are people who want to sleep with you.

I'm just sayin', that's all. It's not as if I've had any offers for sex while I've been doing this goofy site. I'm sure my girlfriend's relieved to hear that. At least I hope she is... *shrug*

$17.00 | PayPal | URL

+ Hey, good news. Threadless did a reprint run on Flowers In The Attic. If you're a J.Ko stalker, you could buy this and be one step closer to mimicking him completely.

+ The Yahoo! Buzz Index did a nice little piece on popular t-shirt searches.

+ Benkay from the Portland Metblog pinged us with his Flickr set of a recent silkscreen run. The design isn't the all-time best thing we've ever seen, but it's nice to see someone going DIY. Keep up the good work, Ben!

+ We wouldn't be caught dead wearing it, but this washable shirt with a built in electronic dB meter is rather intriguing. If it came in black I could see this actually taking off at clubs. Muchas gracias to Matthew Brehe for sending the link along.

I feel mildly weird about running a shirt from one of our advertisers. But it's not as if I'm actually getting money for running their ads or their shirts. I know the cat that runs Enclothe is just a starving student trying to make a little scratch, so I'm letting them run ads in exchange for a t-shirt here and there.

I won't do that for just anyone though. So don't go getting any ideas...

When I got their latest one in the mail, I felt extremely compelled to run it. It's a beautifully surreal depiction of a whale crashing thru buildings in what appeares to be a metro area. Buildings tumble down like children's toys in a cacophonous ballet.

Since I've actually gotten to field test this tee, I must say that it's a wonderful fit and the artwork gets plenty of compliments and questions. Often times I go off the information that I can collect off of a web site, so it's nice to be able to give a tee a physical trial. I'm more than happy to give this bad boy my seal of approval. Beg, borrow or steal if you have to...

$16.00 | PayPal | URL

A perennial favorite around Preshrunk HQ is the web comic Toothpaste For Dinner. Drawn by a man known only to his fans as Drew, his acerbic wit and ammusing observations make for a great daily read. Drew and friends recently launced Sharing Machine, a distribution service for independent artists. With such clients as Mule Design and Kompressor, the future seems rather bright for them.

Since Drew is a self-confessed t-shirt junkie, he's got a whole bunch of great tees floating around his closet. Fortunately for us, he was nice enough to send us some of his favorite shirts for our readers perusal.

Here Comes A Special Boy

This is from Achewood, my favorite comic strip, online or off. It has been my favorite for years, because Chris Onstad is a raw comic genius. This shirt is great, because it has a creepily-optimistic message, and then a little otter running around, and I think sometimes people mistake the otter for a weiner running around, and that makes it even better.

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Hot Dog

I bought this shirt off a guy in the netherlands, who posted on a messageboard that he was making these shirts. Sight unseen, I paypalled him some euros, and got this shirt a bit later. If you are addicted to weird t-shirts like I am then sending ten or fifteen bucks out of the country in exchange for a t-shirt is not much of a stretch at all. As it happens, the screenprinter [Probably high, that's the idea most Americans have of the dutch] printed the design upside down and I got the shirt at a discount, and it is even weirder to have a shirt with an upside-down hotdog. If you are reading this, thanks Neils.

Ming & Ping

Ming & Ping are a synth-pop duo from California. They make new-new-wave music and they are twins. This shirt was too
awesome for me to even think about passing up. I don't really even listen to this sort of music much, but theirs is strangely compelling. Their website is mingping.com, and their album is called mingping.com. Huh.

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Optigan

The Optigan was a home organ manufactured in the 1970s by Mattel. It used these twelve-inch clear acetate disks, printed with amplitude-modulated sound loops - the same idea as the sound stripe on film, but in a circle. These organs were basically failures, prone to electrical and mechanical problems, but were built at a factory in Compton [yes, that Compton] for a few years.

I had an Optigan a few years ago. I bought it at a thrift store for $12 in 1998-ish near my parents' house, and my dad helped my tie it into my old Honda with bungee cords. I drove it half sticking out of my trunk back to my ghetto apartment in Cincinnati, where I played it for a couple of years. Then I discovered eBay and promptly sold the thing for three hundred bucks to some cats from New York. Now all I have is this t-shirt, which I bought on a lark from optigan.com at the same time as a huge packet of service manuals I needed to restore the thing to playable condition. The shirt, thankfully, has not required hours of maintenance every few months to remain wearable.

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Thanks for giving us a peek at your favorite tees, Drew! For those of you that care, we've got another great "What's In Your Closet?" coming up on Friday from one of our favorite weblogging sci-fi authors. Hope to see you then!

I already know what some of you are going to say... "$27.50 for a shirt?!" But if you look closer, you'll realize that price includes shipping. Take into consideration that a few of the places we've linked to charge $5-7 for shipping. Honestly, you're not taking that much of a reaming on this one. So quit pissing and moaning.

Besides, this one's clever and well worth the price of admission. Population density represented by Pac Man and Ghost glyphs. I'm sure there's some sort of social commentary about the American territories being represented by an insatiable glutton of a video game character, but I'm far too lazy to dig any deeper.

$27.50 | PayPal | URL

If you're an American kid who had cable in the 80's, I'll bet you spent a lot of time in front of the television during Summer vacation. Two and a half months of sitting on your ass playing video games and watching reruns was the fucking life - if you were lazy, that is.

When my dad finally got arround to shelling out for the premium channels, HBO and I became inseparable. I probably spent most of my Summers between 1987 and 1993 watching movies. One of my favorites was the John Carpenter flop, "Big Trouble In Little China". It had it all. Kung Fu, Kurt Russel hamming it up, cursing, an evil retarded wookie... I must have seen it 50 times over the course of one Summer. *sigh* Good times.

So it should go without saying that when I came across this tee for Egg Foo Yong Tours, I became way more giddy than any grown man should. Even though I can't fit my hefty frame into an extra large, you know what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like this? "What the hell."

Update: Tian says:

The Chinese characters on this shirt say "success when horse arrives". It means "achieved with ease".

$20.00 | PayPal | URL

Y'know, I really don't fret over trash day so much after our city gave us those handy roll away bins. They really make putting the garbage out less of a chore. The wheels really appeal to my inner and outer lazy bastard.

When I was younger, I remember having to drag three cans of yard waste and two cans of garbage to the curb. That's not too terrible, but my folks house is on a minor hill and we'd pack those cans to their bursting point. Heaven forbid one of them actually broke. You see, I am [and was] a bit of a germaphobe. Heaven forbid I'd have to pick any trash up. *shudder*

Hopefully you can see where I'm going with this, because I sure can't... Hrmph. Sorry.

$25.00 | PayPal | URL

This one from Kelly Vivanco's adoreable webcomic Patches is too cute for words. Seriously, I'm not really going to say anything more. Is that cool?

Wait, what do you mean it's not cool? What if I can't think of anything clever because my brain is baked? There's just no pleasing you people sometimes, is there? *grumbles*

$15.00 | PayPal | URL