Vintage T-Shirt Collective
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Vintage T-Shirts By Lisa Kidner and Sam Knee
November 5, 2008 by Jimmy J · 5 Comments
I finally managed to get my hands on all the vintage t-shirt books published in the last few years. Truth be told, I would recommend any book that contains photos of vintage tees, even if it was scribed in crayon by a two year old child.
Title: Vintage T-Shirts
Meet the authors: Lisa Kidner and Sam Knee are fashion retailers and designers, selling their clothes under the Heart of Glass and Upper Fifth labels. They sell authentic vintage t-shirts from stalls at London’s Portobello, Camden, and Spitafields markets.
Number of shirts inside: 500+
Rating: 4.5/5
This book starts off with a great personal introduction to the authors, explaining how a pink shirt tickled their book-writing fancies. Then the introduction preemptively zips the lips of the nay-sayers. This tells me the authors know the goings-on in the minds of those passionate about vintage t’s. “Did you forget X purposely, and why is Y in here?!” are question they need not answer. They’re well aware no book could be the be-all end-all of vintage tees publications.
Humble introductions aside, this book is actually the closest any have come to the bible of vintage t-shirt books – mainly because it contains more than 500 tees, which doubles that of any book I have in my possession. Yes, they branch out to various genres, not just vintage band t-shirts, and that’s part of the beauty. Don’t worry, you’ll get your rock tee fix too. Their collection has the broadest coverage of musical styles – not just rock – which sets it aside from other books. If that’s music to your ears, then you’ll be happy to hear about the assortment of sought-after vintage tshirt genres, like skateboard, surf, bmx, movie, and so on.
All of this content takes place over the course of 300+ nicely laid out pages featuring vintage photography, great interviews with collectors, and images of related memorabilia and advertising.
The only thing I do say nay to is their proposed battle between printing techniques, screen printing and heat transfer. There really is no comparison; screen printing is better by far, and the top choice of collectors. Heat transfers that were created 20+ years ago are still kicking around in huge quantities, still going unsold in lots on eBay, and still waiting to be pressed on new shirts. Meanwhile, the ones that were actually put to use are now deteriorating, cracking, and fading beyond recognition. While there is a kitschy novelty factor to them, I would have preferred the few featured in this book to have been replaced by more of the excellent screen print selections.
I highly recommend adding this book to your collection.
Additional Vintage T-Shirt Book Reviews.
The Art of the Band T-Shirt by Amber Easby
October 20, 2008 by defunkd · 1 Comment
I finally managed to get my hands on all the vintage t-shirt books published in the last few years. Truth be told, I would recommend any book that contains photos of vintage tees, even if it was scribed in crayon by a two year old child.
Title: The Art of the Band T-Shirt
Meet the authors: Amber Easby has worked for bands such as the White Stripes and the Raconteurs as their merchandiser. Henry Oliver played in the band Die! Die! Die! and designed their album covers and T-shirts.
Number of shirts inside: 100+
Rating: 4/5
When it comes to vintage t-shirt books, this one screams KISS. No, I don’t mean it’s full of Gene Simmons merchandise; I mean, it keeps it simple, stupid. The fact that the book is only six by six inches is part of what makes this work – there’s no room for any B.S. And I agree with this approach; it’s a t-shirt, not the Mona Lisa. I don’t think it’s necessary to dissect every shirt like it’s art history class. Not to say that one day some of this schwag shouldn’t appear in the Louvre, but let people a few centuries from now worry about that. Until that day, I see vintage tee, I read blurb, I flip page, I happy.
If anyone is going to dissect the artwork and tell us what they were trying to tell us, it should be the designer or band. Well, in this book they do. It includes a handful of interesting blurbs that detail what they had up their sleeves: i.e. learn all about the Rolling Stones’ logo directly from the horse’s lips.
The intro to this one is tops amongst the five vintage tee-related books I have in my possession. A well-scribed mental time lapse of the origin of the t-shirt and its evolution into the band tee. Then we are treated to a few cool vintage photos of people wearing, you guessed it, tees.
Keep in mind the book doesn’t limit itself to strictly vintage, or original vintage at that. It does go beyond 2000 and has more than a few admitted reprints scattered throughout. There are plenty of Screen Stars, old Hanes and completely worn tags in there for the vintage heads out there. While I would have preferred these pages to be vintage-oriented, the book doesn’t claim to be vintage-centric, just band tee obsessed. The latter part is still worth a look; and something tells me that in 10 years from now I won’t be complaining about any of the shirts featured.
After writing this, I realize this book is as far from a KISS (the band) book as it can be, given that not a single KISS shirt appears in it. A little ironic, given that Simmons prides himself on being merchandise iconic. Are the authors sticking their tongues out at KISS? I say bonus points. I get enough of KISS merchandising when I’m flipping through channels and Family Jewels is on.
I fully recommend adding this book to your library.
Additional Vintage T-Shirt Book Reviews.
Rock Tease: The Golden Years of Rock T-Shirts
September 27, 2008 by defunkd · 5 Comments
I finally managed to get my hands on all the vintage t-shirt books published in the last few years. Truth be told, I would recommend any book that contains photos of vintage tees, even if it was scribed in crayon by a two year old child.
Title: Rock Tease: The Golden Years of Rock T-shirts
Meet the authors: Erica Easley graduated from Colombia University, worked at Warner Brothers, created ads at J. Walter Thompson and devoted much of her life to being a clotheshorse. Ed Chalfa owns a Portland’s largest and most celebrated resale shop, the Red Light Clothing Exchange. His collection of vintage rock t-shirts is worth over $30,000.
Number of shirts inside: 200+
Rating: 3/5
I admit the first thing I do when I pick up any vintage t-shirt book is furiously flip through it, taking in all the glorious photos, and this book was no exception. Over 200 of them, and plenty amazing designs even the vintage aficionado has never seen before.
Spectacular t-shirts aside, I found this particular vintage t-shirt book to be the most conservatively written amongst the bunch. It reads somewhat like a school text book or a university paper on the subject, which is kind of ironic given the creative subject matter, and, well, it’s cover.
The introduction is way too long. Although it contains lots of great information, I labored through it, always tempted to skip forward and start gazing at the tees again, or even stare at the cover one more time. Some of the shirt analysis feels a little too interpretive, almost like the authors felt as though they had to come up with something insightful about every design. I’m pretty sure they put way more thought in to some of these designs than the bootleggers did.
And if I had to waiver a guess, most of these comments were probably written more by Erica Easley than Ed Chalfa. Case in point – one of the comments written about an Iron Maiden tie dye shirt refers to their mascot as a “tweaked corpse with guns ablaze”. While a very good point is made about the rarity of a Maiden tie die, to Maiden fans, and most fans of vintage t-shirts, that “tweaked corpse” has a name. It’s Eddie and he’s the most iconic rock t-shirt mascot that has ever lived, and is well deserving of a book of his own. Not knowing this is a little bit of a rock tee faux pas, especially in a book devoted to the subject. Something tells me Ed Chalfa, possessing over $30,000 worth of rock shirts, and sharing the same name, is probably on a first name basis with Eddie.
The book does feature the most impressive amount of bootlegs designs of any of the books, which are just as much a part of rock tee history as the ones with copyrights on them. One of the bootlegs includes a shocking Ozzy Osbourne jersey with KKK imagery and a very good point is made regarding one of the downsides of bootlegging.
I recommend adding this book to your library.
Additional Vintage T-Shirt Book Reviews.