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: If vintage tee addiction is hereditary meet the proof in the poly-cotton pudding. Brothers Patrick and Marc Guetta own and operate the decade old World of Vintage T-Shirts store on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. 

Number of shirts inside: 650+

Rating: 4.8/5

Buy it: Amazon / Taschen

Welcome to the closest thing to a vintage t-shirt bible you’ll ever find. In 2008 we gave that honor to a book by the same name that contained over 500 tees, but then along came this beast which trumps it by 150. Not only that, the pages are actually about 1/4 larger so you’re getting more bang for your buck. And bigger is definitely better especially because it’s showcasing a vast array of vintage tee genres, rather than just a music related ones.

If I judge this book solely by the cover, it’s perfect. Great fold out, die-cut raised detailing on the tee’s ringer and raised printing for the home-made style lettering. No, you sicko, the lettering doesn’t have a fuzzy feel to it, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a consideration. None of the other books put as much creativity in to their appearance.

The write-ups banked in the early part of the book are ok, but after reviewing five books previous to it I’m jaded. At this point there’s nothing new anyone can say about a glorified piece of cloth that Marlon Brando popularized. And since the authors are imports from France there’s also French version of the write-up, which is not foreign to me given I live in a bilingual country. Don’t worry those pages aren’t wasted with duplicate photos, so for everyone who isn’t fluent in French (including me I dropped it after grade 9, oops) you still have something to gawk at.

Relax, there’s not a lot of reading to do. After the final sentence it’s strictly tees for 350 pages. The concert tee section won’t blow your mind if you’re a vintage aficionado. I sold many of them during my days as a dealer which is something I can’t say about the contents of Ripped or Vintage Rock T-Shirts. But the book does a bang up job of touching on all the good things in life: sports, cars, surfing, booze, beer, movies and tv. Hell there’s even a fantasy and video game section PLUS Maiden and Harley receive extra attention. Great torsos think alike.

The downside to its size and special printing is that the book also carries the biggest price tag coming in at double the price as its predecessors. Is it justifiable? I think so especially if you’re going to buy just one. Have a look at the first 100 pages compliments of the publisher and do your own math. Pretty ballsy, but only a book so big could offer such a bonus.

Preview the book>>here. And please let us know your thoughts below.

Buy it: Amazon / Taschen

Additional Vintage T-Shirt Book Reviews.

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: Ripped: T-Shirts from the Underground

Meet the author: Cesar Padilla survived through a horrific childhood incident – the loss of his entire t-shirt collection at the hands of his mother. Twenty years later and he’s managed to restore a portion of his collection and recapture his Sunset Strip glory days via poly-cotton.     

Number of shirts inside: 200+

Rating: 4.75/5

Buy it: Amazon / eBay

Reading this book is like hanging out with a bunch of people that are way cooler than you. The closer you were to the front lines of these musical movements the more you’ll appreciate it. If you’re looking for mainstream vintage t-shirt porn, look elsewhere because this is the most niche of all the vintage t-shirt books. And with a new vintage t-shirt book emerging yearly, this themed piece is one future authors should take note of.

The primary focus of Ripped is counterculture music and vintage t-shirts are the medium best fitted to tell the story. The blurb inside describes it as a visual history, but don’t expect an actual history lesson – do that on your own time. It assumes you’re in the know and it can’t be bothered to explain much. It scores points by speaking directly to its intended audience and remains true to the counterculture attitude it glorifies. Kudos for not sacrificing integrity by trying to appease the masses.

But then I stumbled on some Run DMC t-shirts and assumed I was in for a real treat given the book had so accurately represented other genres. One of my favorite examples of this is an amazing Kraftwerk tee that exudes the history of electronic music. With this in mind I started fantasizing about what might appear next from the hip hop persuasion: a DJ Kool Herc or a DIY New York b-boy t-shirt? Maybe some rare Sugar Hill Gang, Afrika Bambaataa or Grandmaster Flash swag? Nope. Just two token Run DMC tees and they stand out like a sore thumb.

I felt ripped off in the rap category, but Ripped still rivals Vintage Rock T-Shirts in terms of obscure pieces. And unlike the Vintage Rock T-Shirts collection I doubt Ripped’s shirts would ever be put up for auction. The inspiration behind the book and its nifty write-ups make it clear the sentimental value of these tees trumps the almighty dollar. The cynical intro by Lydia Lunch is tops compared to those we have reviewed in the past which have all been way too wordy and Pulitzer poised. The rest of the contributors are welcome additions – one even discusses digging through the drawers of the deceased Sid & Nancy. Oh and if you’ve ever wondered the history behind John Lennon’s New York City tee – it’s in the book.

I highly recommend adding this book to your collection, it’s perfect (as long as you close your eyes on pages 170 and 179).

Buy it: Amazon / eBay

Additional Vintage T-Shirt Book Reviews.

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 Rock T-Shirts

Meet the author: Johan Kugelberg makes records and cooks dinner; and when he’s not doing that he’s writing books inspired by music. For this book he delves deep into the t-shirt collection of New York’s legendary vintage clothiers, “What Goes Around Comes Around.”   

Number of shirts inside: 300+

Rating: 5/5

Buy it: Amazon / eBay

Meet the holy grail of vintage t-shirt books; and the only one that truly embodies the spirit of rock ‘n roll.

The writing is a lot like lyrics from your favorite tune: sometimes it doesn’t make sense, yet you fully comprehend its meaning, mostly because you’re making up your own.

Just like all the legendary bands featured within, the designers of the book didn’t care about breaking a few rules. At times you’ll be squinting to read text irresponsibly placed over non-contrasting backgrounds or blinded by other busy layouts. It’s no coincidence that reading it will make you feel like you’ve just left a concert: your senses have been jolted, you’ll probably have a slight headache, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Enough about the creativity of the renegade design, what about the t-shirts?” asks you. It’s the best collection of vintage t-shirts I have ever seen. Like me, if you have obsessed about all things vintage t-shirts over the years, you probably think you have seen it all. Think again, Mr. Magoo. This book features shirts that you will likely never see for sale on eBay. There’s only a handful of tees in the book that I have had my hands on. And for the most part, the rest I didn’t even know existed. Before my time? Yeah, that’s my excuse, since all the tees featured are from the ’60s and ’70s. These shirts were born to the pre-mass-produced merchandising era that ran wild in the ’80s.

The sizes of the featured garments are a true indication of their age. Most of the shirts pictured could only be modeled by skinny men, petite women, and even a classroom of children. It was a time when our kids had yet to consume steroid-filled steaks, and we weren’t filling our bellies with too many burgers. A time when our rock stars and their fans were still skinny, which is also made evident by these subjects in the book’s great vintage photography.

Don’t worry, the book itself is very fat – more than 250 pages jam-packed with vintage t-shirt goodness.   

I recommend adding this book to your collection, or else stop calling yourself a vintage aficionado.   

Buy it: Amazon / eBay

Additional Vintage T-Shirt Book Reviews.

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

Buy it: Amazon / eBay

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. 

Buy it: Amazon / eBay

Additional Vintage T-Shirt Book Reviews.

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

Buy it: Amazon / eBay

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.

Buy it: Amazon / eBay

Additional Vintage T-Shirt Book Reviews.