Meet DJ AM, aka Adam Goldstein. Here he is with Gene Simmons from KISS. Gene doesn’t look very impressed, probably because DJ AM is wearing a vintage Axl Rose t-shirt and not a Gene Simmons one. DJ AM was a member of the band Crazy Town best known for “Butterfly”; and in modern times is world renowned for his abilities on the ones and twos. His talents frequently land him gigs at private parties for celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Leo DiCaprio and collaborations with artists like Madonna and Will Smith. He even guest starred on Entourage, yadda, yadda, yadda. The important part is he does all of these this wearing the rarest vintage tees on the plant. Coincidence? I think not.

You have over 600 pairs of shoes but how many vintage tees do you own? What’s the rarest one you own? You’ve paid $3000 for a pair of shoes, what’s the most you’ve paid for a shirt?

I honestly have no idea how many tees I own. It’s pretty scary though. I have hundreds. I am an addict, period. So when it comes to shirts, I indulge. I can never have too many t-shirts. I don’t know the rarest one I own but I’ve never seen another Eric B & Rakim – Paid in Full shirt. Nas saw me in it and seemed almost pissed like “how come that’s not mine?” I think my favorite though is my De La Soul – 3 feet high and rising promo tee. It glows in the dark and has the four questions from the game show skit on the album on the back. And wait, did I really pay $3000 for a pair of shoes?!

You’re vintage tee collection is overshadowed by your shoes. Are people too busy staring at your feet to notice the awesomeness on your torso?

I do a party in LA every Sunday night called Banana Split. A few friends there are fellow sneaker/vintage shirt addicts. We always try to outdo one another every week. If its a Newport cigs tee or a New Kids on the Block or a Rambo III crew shirt – we always try to get a “oh shit” from the other person. As for shoes, nothing will ever beat a clean pair of Jordan 1s in red/black/white. Those are the ones that started it all, and will always end it all for me.

I’m sure you have some rare Nike tees in your collection – which ones? Air Jordan? Pin Wheel? How come you didn’t wear one in the Nike commercial you were in?

I have an Air Jordan 1 tee. It’s not that rare, but I love it. In the Nike commercial they wanted me to wear some new Nike stuff, so I did.

Do you ever mix and match shoe and shirt outfits? Say you’re wearing a RUN DMC shirt, would you wear shell toe Adidias?

Of course! Somewhere I have a folder of just shirts and the shoes that match. The Andre Agassi shirts had this color called infrared and that’s the same color on the Nike Air Max 90. There are certain colors on sneakers you can never find on clothes. Like the Nike Tiffany dunks blue, happens to perfectly match my Melrose Place tee with this weird terquoise color. I wouldn’t want to be that obvious though to wear a DMC shirt and shell toes. That’s a lil’ overkill – matches, not over matches – is when its cool.

Aside from Defunkd (forced plug) do you have any other sources for vintage tees? Is there one t-shirt out they you have been hunting for forever and can’t seem to get on your torso?

I have a few re-sellers I get shirts from and a few friends who promo me stuff. Kirk from 4All2Envy, Corey Shapiro (below, right) from Old Gold Eyewear in Montreal and I’m forgetting a few others, oops. I want that vintage Black Flag t-shirt Nervous Breakdown (I love that song) featured on this blog. And I want a Daft Punk – Homework (first album) shirt.

Do you remember certain situations by what shirt & shoes you have on?

Yes, I always remember what shirt or shoes I wore to special events. When I hosted the red carpet for the Grammys I thought “ok, this is time I wear this deadstock pair of jordan 1s” I’m a sicko huh?

Check out our last interview with costume designer Susan Matheson who supplied the vintage converse shirt for Step Brothers or for more information on vintage tees visit our homepage.

Meet costume designer Susan Matheson, Tinseltown’s go-to gal when a flick calls for a vintage t-shirt wardrobe. Her recent work on Step Brothers caused a frenzy of fans searching for the vintage Converse t-shirt John C. Reilly wore throughout the movie. Wondering where you can get one? Read on. I first met Susan while she was browsing through our store a few years ago. Yes, we’re happy a shirt we provided made a 15 second cameo in the film. Oh, and Susan has many times seen Will Ferrell in his undies, but then again, who hasn’t?

What’s your all-time favorite t-shirt and the rarest one you own?

Right now I have a fantastic Ice Cube “Wanted by FBI” t-shirt that I can’t get enough of. I tried to use it in the film “Friday Night Lights” but Ice Cube wouldn’t give me permission, so instead it has become my favourite sleep shirt. The most valuable t-shirt I own was made by “World’s End”, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s label from the early 1980s. I dragged my mother to the World’s End store and bought one of the t-shirts from the Pirates collection in London in 1981 when I was a teenager. My older brother had bought “Never Mind The Bollock’s Here’s The Sex Pistols” on the street in London in 1977 and even though I was a kid at the time, from that moment on the Punk Rock movement and Malcolm McLaren sparked my imagination. A couple of years ago I saw my beloved t-shirt on the market for about $1200.

Tell us a little bit about the process of dressing actors for a film.

It is impossible for me to find enough originals of these shirts in their sizes to be able to use in the movie as I often need as many as 12 of them. I have photo doubles, stunt doubles and the actor wearing the same item at the same time when we are shooting. This is why I have to manufacture enough multiples of the t-shirt in the correct sizes to be able to use them.

When I recreate a vintage t-shirt I have to copy it exactly, as otherwise I will never get the legal clearances that I need to be able to use it in a film. For example, the Yoda t-shirt that John C. Reilly wears in Step Brothers. This was a terribly expensive shirt to copy, it required about 15 screens eventually to get the print right.

All of the t-shirts that I have used on Will Ferrell have had to be recreated by me for him. A lot of my favourite t-shirts were originally meant for kids or women, so the sizes were always terribly wrong for him, as he is 6′4″. I’ll never forget the baby pink Crystal Gayle t-shirt that I used on him in Talladega Nights. I had purchased it at a thrift store in North Carolina and I loved it immediately as it was both so right and so wrong. Not only was the t-shirt pink, but her hair and lips were glitterized. Will loved it so much that he wore the Crystal Gayle t-shirt to the world premiere of Talladega Nights.

There’s a lot of red tape involved in getting permission to use a t-shirt in a film, can you break down the process? I was surprised to see so much Star Wars stuff.

I still can’t believe that Lucas film gave legal approval to Sony studios for the use of the Yoda t-shirt as well as the pajama pants that I made for Will from old Star Wars sheets. I was absolutely sure that they would never ever say yes as the Star Wars films were produced by 20th Century Fox. I started off with about 30 different Star Wars t-shirts and then narrowed it down to my favourite, the Yoda t-shirt.

On Step Brothers, I submitted legal clearance forms for well over 100 t-shirts and in the end only got clearance on about 20. It’s always the t-shirts that you think are going to be a sure thing that don’t get approved.

I have received fascinating letters from bands who have refused my t-shirt requests. One of the best refusal letters was from the remaining members of Nirvana. They wrote a very heartfelt personal letter about why they didn’t want to let me use the Nirvana smile t-shirt. On the other hand there are bands like AC/DC who always always approve requests for t-shirts and those are the very bands that I will never use in one of my films. If I see another film with a teenager wearing an AC/DC t-shirt I will have to gag. It’s become so cliche and it always tells me that people didn’t want to have to struggle to get something cool and different into the film. I always want to use something that people are surprised by and that they kind of have forgotten, but when they see it they have a warm and fuzzy feeling about it. I loved the Pablo Cruise t-shirt in Step Brothers for this very reason. Everyone who saw it paused for a moment and then said, wow, I remember them. I have since started up a correspondence with the lead singer of Pablo Cruise who was thrilled when his son saw it on Will.

What can you tell us about the Converse t-shirt John C. Reilly wore in Step Brothers?

It was quite difficult getting the crazy Converse Sneaker t-shirt into Step Brothers, but this is the one that everyone asks me about. It was a child’s t-shirt that I became obsessed with. The minute I found it I knew that I had to put it in a movie.  Unfortunately no one agreed with me and in fact they probably thought I was having a bad bad taste day, as opposed to a good bad taste day. Eventually everyone surrendered because I had driven them crazy about it and had exhausted them into submission. If I love a t-shirt then I become like a snappy snarling dog with a bone, so I am thrilled to know that other people thought it was cool as well. Of course when the film comes out it’s usually the t-shirt that had the most bitter battles that is the one that everyone remembers and loves.

I still have the original artwork for it and have been thinking about creating some additional ones for a Defunkd charity auction.

(If you want to find out when this charity auction takes place sign up for our email newsletter. OR if you’re really desperate there are some replicas available on eBay.)

How far will you go to get a shirt?

Anytime I leave town on a road trip I will stop and hunt at local thrift stores. Some of my best Americana t-shirts I have actually found in foreign countries like New Zealand, believe it or not. I have to admit that I am ruthless when it comes to vintage t-shirts. My friends will never let me forget the time that I paid an old lady for the t-shirt that she was wearing. I went into a store with her and bought her a new shirt in exchange. It’s not that I’m ruthless because I personally want to own every fantastic t-shirt in the world, it’s more like I want to spread the t-shirt gospel and show people what amazing stuff is still out there.

Want to buy a tee? Check out The 20 Best Spots to Buy Vintage T-Shirts on eBay.

Check out our last interview with The Godfather of vintage heavy metal t-shirts or for more information on vintage t-shirts visit our homepage.

Meet Jochen from Germany. That’s a picture of him with Travor from Sadus. He’s the webmaster of a DEATH and Overkill fansite and two others that are vintage t-shirt specific. Jochen’s outstanding vintage t-shirt collection at Old School Metal Shirts is over 600 of the most sought after vintage metal shirts on the planet. And he’s not selling a single one of them. You might have better luck tracking down something to buy on his popular forum of heavy metal shirt collectors, Shirtchaser. 

How long have you been collecting?

I’m 34 years old, and I bought my first shirt when I was 13 or 14. So about 20 years. I started my career very early – at 15 I had a steady income so I had lots of money for concerts and shirts. By 18 I had my first small collection of about 25-30 Shirts.

Where do you find your tees? 

In the Past (before the internet and eBay) I bought my shirts at concerts and in a street shop next to my city. In the late ’80s and early ’90s they sold original band shirts which were imported from the UK.

The Holy Bibles from the past were the EMP and Bullshirt merchandising catalogues. They were like a dream come true, filled with hundreds of great shirts. It was amazing, at that time, you got a original Cynic Tour Shirt from 1993 for around $6. Today you have to pay $150-200 for this shirt. If you only knew then, you would me a rich man now.

Seven or eight years ago I started buying t-shirts on eBay. Then about a a year ago I had the idea to create a online forum to bring metal shirt collectors world wide, together, to share their passion with other crazy people. So now Shirtchaser is a very big community of metal shirt collectors. This portal is a very good place to buy and trade shirts.

Tell us a little something about the two rarest t-shirts you have and the most you have ever paid for a tee.

Hmmm, that is always hard to answer, because this changes a lot. Narrowing it down to two is tough because I’d like to mention 15-20 shirts in my collection. At the moment I think Metallica – Metal up Your Ass (first edition) and Control Denied – a shirt which Chuck Schuldiner made only for the band and some friends, only a few were made.

Some people think high price shirts are “rare”. But, how rare is a shirt with a price of $400-600 if you know 15 people who have it? For me, a really rare shirt must have a unique story or background.

I think the most money I’ve ever spent is about $350-400 on a Iron Maiden Texas shirt. I hunted for it for a really long time.

Your site details how you store your shirts, do you wear any of them?

I wear all my t-shirts but I also protect them in plastic when not in use. Sweatshirts and baseball shirts are hanging in my wardrobe. In the beginning it was a lot of work to pack all the shirts into plastic, but the end result was worth it. I sort my shirts like a CD or LP collection by band name, so it’s easy to find and pick them out. And believe it or not, after washing it’s much more easy to fold them. I see only pros in this kind of shirt storing.

You also have a section on your site for dyeing vintage t-shirts, don’t you think it’s more important to preserve the original look of the garment? 

In the past I also had this opinion about faded metal shirts. But a deep black color of a shirt raises the value. In my dyeing description you can see also the positive effect of dyeing. With a darker black, you get a better contrast to the print, and then the shirt and print looks unused and fresh.

It’s a mission of mine to keep some rare shirts in a amazing condition. To conserve them for a long time, and show the next generation of shirt collectors what kind of shirts existed in the past. Just like a archaeologist would do with his discoveries. I’m not really into cutting sleeves and collars – that’s a crime against old shirts. I also keep the shirts away from sunlight and moths, both are t-shirt enemies.

Do you have any secret stain removal techniques?

Hmmmm, some stains are impossible to get out. Sometimes I use special textile cleaning liquids (for oil, blood, and other things). Sometimes I use a cutter to scratch some paint stains. Also black re-colouring brings good results.

When you die, which t-shirt will you be wearing in your coffin? 

This changes a lot. But if I have to make a decision at the moment, I will wear my Slayer Reign in Pain tee. But in ten weeks I am having my first child, a boy, and I hope he follows in the footsteps of his father and finds love for the greatest music in the world – HEAVY METAL. Then he’ll inherit my collection.

Check out our other interviews with vintage junkies or our top 5 list of vintage thrash metal t-shirts.