SeatShirt - T-Shirts Off The Rail

September 23, 2008

This is most certainly a new one on me, SeatShirt.eu offer designs from the seats from trains, buses and trams to your t-shirt! I’ve always been fascinated by the miserable failure of public transport textile design. Though personally as a Brit, seeing those infamously awful yet familiar tartan patterns of the old ’slammer’ trains replaced by plain and rather unnoticeable corporate patterns over recent years has been subconsciously disconcerting. I think I had grown to love the sad municipality of British design history without really knowing it, the home-made affair of ‘keen workers with an eye’ being given a chance (under union rules no doubt) to express their artistic bent in some small fashion.

Nowadays transport textiles are probably designed by corporate design groups armed with a team of hotshot psychologists and market researchers, however I can’t imagine what their remit would be? Something that doesn’t looked stained, even if it is, be it sweat, urine, alcohol, greasy takeaways or newspaper print. I’m not sure how often train seat covers are cleaned, but seeing as they’re stapled to the bench I doubt it’s very often.

However, following in the footsteps of the most respected Post-Modernists, SeaShirt.eu have taken the ultimate step in cultural self-referentialism, moving the goalposts from public infrastructure to fashion statement. I’m not sure how spectacular the results are, I’d rather see their t-shirts as all-over prints, from hem to hem, front to back, as say you would expect on a seat? All of their designs are predominantly European and Japanese in origin and they make a point of displaying their humble sources at their snazzy website. You can buy all of their shirts at their shop. Each design is available as an organic/climate neutral t-shirt with free shipping.

Black Series (Tokyo)

Tokyo style. This limited edition features a unique design from a seat onboard the Kensei Line in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. The shirt is only available in men’s sizes and in the colour combination you can see here. Limited edition. 100 Pieces exclusive. Here we can see a modern update on the old standard of Scottish tartan used on many British trains and buses in the past.

Grey Series (Copenhagen)

Scandinavian purity. The Grey series features a great pattern from a DSB train seat in the Danish capital. The shirt is only available in men’s sizes and in the colour combination you can see here. I do like the industrial motif here, especially the screw heads. Organic/climate neutral shirts in grey in a limited edition of 100.

Blue Series (Vienna)

The third series from Seatshirt comes from Vienna, the imperial city on the Danube river in Austria. They found this pattern on one of the Viennese U-Bahn lines whilst stopping at some of the impressive Jugendstil station buildings designed by the world famous architect Otto Wagner. A modern and funny design from a historical city. Very jazzy.

Like I say great idea, but SeatShirt definitely need to think bigger, as in hem-to-hem all over t-shirt prints. Why not expand the idea to all seats? What about the patterns from a few royal thrones of Europe, or even some presidential versions for the transatlantic market?