101 Apparel – The Sound of Fashion

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If there’s one thing 101 Apparel love it’s music, their t-shirt collection affords us mere mortals the closest alignment between sound and vision since well I can’t think what, all I know is if fashion made a sound and you could see it, you most likely find it in 101′s vast range of killer urban shirts. If you’re a DJ, MC, a wannabe, or simply can’t do without expressing your love for great beats to the world, then at least one of 101′s tees has to be in your collection, no argument. Of course there’s plenty more to choose from at 101′s label, in case you’re feeling the chill and want to wrap up, including fleeces, hoodies and sweats, but as you may have guessed by now, we’re focusing on the tees, it’s what we do best ;)

Eric Crandell, the soulful style guru behind the label has a unique yet highly eclectic taste for musical vision. His designs travel through time and across the world in search of the best of the best in aural ecstasy, all the time passing a nod and a wink to the coolest sounds from the greatest genres and sub-genres of all-time. Hip Hop, Dub, Soul, Funk, Rock, you name it 101 Apparel has covered it, in fact they’re all over it like a ton of bricks, so unplug your ears, open your eyes, and get ready for some of the most sound shirts this side of a tropical dawn heaving with party revellers and show stealing dance-off kings and queens from every culture, creed and final destination. A lesson in style from 101 Apparel.

Re-Edit T-Shirt

Here’s a great example of intelligent abstraction, essentially there’s a reason behind the madness, Re-Edit doesn’t just offer up a pretty pattern, it actually references the culture of sampling. The design displays a grid of sectioned vinyl, broken down in to multivariate parts, simply and succinctly serving a bold graphic parallel to the art of sound sampling, a technology, skill and ideology which has revolutionised much of music in the last few decades. Sure we could all get caught up in the argument of copyright, but the truth is, as Baudrillard would no doubt agree, we’ve done everything, or rather the basic constituents of everything there is to do, there is now no such thing as a solitary original thought, image, sound, what have you. We live in a time of experimentation, we have a whole gamut of history to delve into now, we are in the age of hybridization, it’s what we do to stop ourselves going crazy, if we didn’t time would surely approach a cultural full-stop. Rip it up, start again, re-edit.

Sound System T-Shirt

Don’t worry it’s not an earthquake, the ground maybe shaking, but that’s just the bass thumping down to the earth’s core. 101′s Sound System tee celebrates one of the most awesome sights you’ll see in the music industry, a full-blown (perhaps not the best choice of phrase) dub-style sound system built to rock you like you’ve never been rocked before. If you do find yourself at a massive sound system party don’t wander up to the bass amp and rest your head against it, besides going permanently deaf you will probably up chuck last night’s dinner to boot. Set-ups like this are rarer on the ground these days, unless you happen to be at a desert festival, at a secret rave on the dark side of the moon or the ghettos Jamaica where the stacked bass of a man-made mountain of a hundred amps stil roar. I don’t know about you but here in the UK we have so many noise laws these days, mainly brought about by the nimby (not in my back yard) brigade, where one whiff of a decent dub beat, no matter how many valleys and mountains it may be from the nearest town, will guarantee a major swoop by the local bill. Still, at least this tee will rock you from your head to your toes!

Musicologist T-Shirt

Musicologist?Ah, the science of sound, setting up the perfect sound production environment can take years of training, experience and practice. Some years ago I spent almost a year training as a music producer, I lost patience with the course, especially as most of the gear you’ll need constantly updates, besides which to produce a perfect analogue sound you will find yourself lost in a world of tricky dealers and highly inflated prices for the rarest amps, mixing gear, synths, decks, plus of course you’ll need a great rack (err… not the sort you’ll see at Spring Break), packed with hardware that will test the very limits of your patience. If you want to record accoustic things get even more complicated, mics can be troublesome, and if you have to deal with a band on top of all that, well you get my drift, I opted for an easier life hah. If you haven’t and you want to rub it in everyone’s face, then show them you understand the physics of sound, this design is as smart@ss as it gets, featuring the Hornbostel-Sachs mandala diagrammatic classification of how sound is produced by musical instruments. Show your fellow music nerds that, yes, you can break sound down to the sub atomic level.

Discotheque T-Shirt

101 Apparel’s Discotheque tee is a veritable modern classic of typographic gusto, music history savvy and a certain jazzy je ne sais quoi. Almost Dadaist in composition, this √ºber funky ultra slick tee offers a veritable cornucopia of club history. Spanning from the celebrated jazz haunt of Village Vanguard, to the sultry disco beats of The Loft, on to the post-punk of the Hacienda Club, on to to the hip-hop impresarios of The Latin Quarter to proto-house music of Chicago and Detroit. This is the ultimate historical trip through modern music history, clubbing anyone who passes by with style-envy, a guaranteed killer on and off the dancefloor. If you want to dress to impress (in more ways than one) you need 101′s bestseller Discotheque!

To check out all of their Eric’s beautifully loud and hip tees, put your ear to the ground and follow the beat at www.101apparel.com today.

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