Invisible Friends, Broken Icons and Dead Rock Stars.

Invisible Friend is the kind of friend I’d like, as long as it’s not the crazy kind that will end up putting you in a safe ward for a few months until it’s decided to leave. Nor the kind my sister had as a child either, we were both only a few years old and she’d spend most nights nattering on to her invisible friend, she’d named it “Witch”, and whenever I’d pretend I had an invisible wizard, she’d insist her witch had killed it. I couldn’t see the point of continuing so I let her have the monopoly on fantasy friendships. Things have turned round now, I’m the crazy sibling, she’s the respectable one, I rant all night about t-shirts, whilst she waits for daylight and only talks to people she can actually see.

Invisible-Friend.co.uk first caught my eye when I spotted their sponsored link on Google, I don’t normally follow paid-for links, past experience has taught me that most Google Ads lead you on a wild goose chase, resulting in a page of search results from an inferior search engine. This time it was different, I can’t remember the link text, but the name drew me in, and I wasn’t disappointed. Now I have to be cruel to be kind but I do think the web-site needs a little work, I’d rather get straight to the collection on the home-page, but I can understand why they’d want to prepare you, they have an incredibly strong and graphic style that might scare the pants off the more lily-livered t-shirt punters out there.

If you’re looking for art pedigree then an immediate qualifier for me has to be their about page, citing Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s ‘Sex’ store (circa 1970’s Kings Road London) as an inspiration for their designs is a perfect way to break the ice. If you’re going to have an invisible friend, make sure they at least have good, and this one certainly has, the collection is quite simply outstanding for a relatively unknown label. I’m not making excuses for them, they do need to build the collection, but as an introduction to IF’s unique style and approach to t-shirt creation, you couldn’t do much better than the classic-in-the-making Victoria Crossbones.

This is an absolutely awesome design, it comes on black and fuschia (as seen above) and in all honesty it’s one of the most succinct and power-packed designs I’ve seen in some time. I’m a little worried what the copyright issues are on this, but seeing as Invisible Friend is UK-based and Victoria is now permanently stationed in La La Land I’m sure she won’t bother chasing this. Imagine the publicity if she did?

With her husband near enough retired from football (the original kind and no I’m not calling it soccer), and almost no chance of the Spice Girls re-reforming (I never liked them the first time round), I’m sure the paparazzi would jump on her old bones the moment she started to complain. Think about it, size zero, addicted to fashion (well shopping anyway), with no discernible talent (she’s the one that sings out of tune), except for self-publicity perhaps, The Press would have a field day. Then again I may have her all wrong, Posh, if you buy one of these t-shirts all is forgiven.

Evils Now before I start receiving hundreds of complaints (well one or two) let me just say that the following work doesn’t necessarily represent the views of this blogger (lol) - although I’m pretty neutral as far as Elvis goes. I like some of his songs, I’d rather hear the original old blues singers do them, but he did a fair job of a lot of other people’s songs. Sure he ate too much, he wore too many silver suits, he got a little bit over zealous about the whole God thing, but essentially he couldn’t be described as evil.

Wordplay, you know I’m a sucker for it, can’t get much sweeter than this, just two letters away from anarchy, imagine if he was dyslexic, he’d have wrote a lot of scary autographs for starters. It did get me thinking one thing though, Elvis is the first true corporate figurehead, that’s rather evil, at least by association. He became a product, his image, his voice, and it was sold to America as the acceptable face of black music, i.e a white one. Besides the work around the eyes gives you a big clue to the t-shirts’ true meaning, essentially a quote from Vicky Pollard of Little Britain fame - “No, but yeah, but no… don’t give me evils man!” -perhaps you have to be British to appreciate that line.

Dead Rock Stars! Yet again Invisible Friend have hit the nail on the head. It’s a little morbid I suppose, but these days there are so many dead movie stars appearing in cgi-monstrosity ad campaigns I can’t see the problem with digging up a few dinosaurs and lining them up for another final short bout of fame. At least they lived fast and died young) for the most part, rather than the rest of us who will most likely live long and die slowly. If you’re going to go, go in a blaze of glory I say, there’s nothing worse than seeing a band dragged out of the nursing home for one last worldwide tour.

I can even spot a few of them from here, Elvis obviously, Buddly Holly down the bottom right, I think I can see Janice Joplin, Brian Jones, Sid Vicious and Jimi Hendrix to name a few - beats Soduku hands down! This t-shirt has an unexpectedly humbling effect, it puts life in context, fame is fleeting, they were famous, but we’re alive, who knows perhaps success does suck, I can understand the notion of fame being intolerable, but is death the only answer? Couldn’t I just buy a tropical island and retreat again? Oh no I’m not famous, oh yes I’m broke, oh well, one can dream, well I would if I didn’t write in this blog all night.

A wall of faces, all touched by fame, all most likely to be lost in the passage of time, at least their music lives on, and their spirit for adventure (and misadventure), and all jam-packed into one single t-shirt design. Great work!

The Henge - I used to have hair - lots and lots of it - I wasn’t a biker because I didn’t have a bike - I had run that under a truck at the tender age of 17, plus I’d heard enough horror stories, friends of friends flying off cliffs over the summers of the late 80’s. Still I had the hair. I did go to Reading Festival around then, I don’t remember much of my time there except for falling out with a girlfriend who wanted to play the field with a bottle of Cider and Black, then was sick over herself, and then decided she wanted to get back together. I tried to be a hippy, there was Glastonbury, but I never made it to the festival, I did spend a Winter Solstice on the Tor with a bunch of hippies, I wasn’t impressed, but I did still have plenty of hair then.

There’s only a few things I do remember from those days, one was a Hawkwind Concert in Finsbury Park in North London, another was a day out to The Henge. It’s a kind of ancient calendar, built around 3000 years ago by obsessive Masons with little else to do. It’s in a mess these days, when I was a kid you could climb all over it, now you have to be a Druid if you want to do that. The Government are supposed to be moving the nearby ‘A’ Road further away from the site, the pollution is turning it black. The energy there (if you are a hippy) has seriously depleted over the years, too many police/traveller/druid riots I suppose. Avebury is far more mellow, but it doesn’t look as good as Stone Henge. The most iconic lumps of rock in the world.

It’s part of British History, ancient history, it should be protected, people should be able to pray there, or whatever it is they do, but I’d rather just wear the t-shirt. The irony is if you hang it up in front of you and stare, that’s about how much you’ll see of The Henge in real life. With the perimeter fence it’s so far away, you’re better off wearing IF’s tee than sacrificing your goats to get in, plus you’ll have to watch a wrinkly old ‘priest’ and ‘priestess’, covered in goose fat, getting it on whilst they mount a fertility stone.

Invisible Friend - you’ll get me in trouble! I’ve managed to upset the Elvis fraternity, the Druid faith and Posh (ah well), you’re a bad influence, but well worth the trouble! Take a look at Invisible Friend’s site today and all will be revealed…