Fat Gold Are No Fools

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All that glisters isn’t gold, and Fat Gold Clothing are certainly not as precious about ideology or concept as some t-shirt labels out there, but there’s definitely one thing you can expect from FGI and that’s attitude by the bucketful – and by that I mean this ‘their tees are so in your face you’d need surgery to remove them’.

The site is sharp, slick and well organised** yet leaves you unprepared for the raucous behaviour in textile printed form that awaits you. They do a very nice sideline in badges which feature all their mad, bad and dangerous to know creations, and a blog that’s well worth a lookie, I particularly enjoyed their features on a midi controller that looks something like an old Midway arcade game and a fab video of Only by Nine Inch Nails, as well as (of course) a little background info on all their designs. The truth is Fat Gold is more of an attitude than a brand, a mentality than a brand, you’ll either be into it or not.

There’s one particular t-shirt at FGI I absolutely love, Fat Gold Skull (I’ll show you it in a minute), it sums up everything about the label for me, scary and funny at the same time, reassuringly anarchic, totally off the wall but grounded in a great deal of common sense. They spoof where they have to but this isn’t a “funny t-shirt” brand, this isn’t a trendy for the sake of being trendy company, Fat Gold follow their own sense of style (and do very well by it), I’d love to see a lot more tees in the future from these guys, and I do hope they don’t make the mistake of being a slave to “Seasons” like some of their competitors like to do, the fact is “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.

I don’t want to see their best work disappear for the fear of keeping everything fresh, sure add more designs (the more the better) but don’t lose the old favourites. (This last opinion applies to almost all the up ‘n’ coming labels in the market not just FGI). I’d love to see them hold on to a few more of the older tees in stock, such as their Ku Klux Clan spoof of Ghostbusters and most especially their robot tee, but I suppose it all comes down to economics, you have to follow your instincts when it comes to selling tees.

Anyhoo, let’s get down to the nitty gritty and take a big bite out of Fat Gold and see if you like the taste.

Fat Gold Skull Tee

I think this tee rocks, it’s a killer, simple, funny, macabre and one of the most subtle spoofs I’ve seen in quite a while. Essentially it reminds me of two things, the first is M. Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense, the movie, the kid, he sees dead people, yes? No? Watch it, it’s weird, most people have seen it but if you haven’t you should. Funny what happened to the kid in that movie? He was in A.I too, freaky kid with a lot of talent. Anyway, secondly it’s X-ray Specs, now, if you’ve read enough dodgy old Marvel and D.C comics you’ve probably seen all the dodgy ads on the back page (do they still do them?).

I am that old I remember when Bazooka Joe used to advertise junk, you’d have to buy a few million gum and you could buy a bike or something. The funny thing was I’m here in the UK, as a kid I knew they wouldn’t ever send me anything even if I did collect enough wrappers, I think I might’ve written to them and asked and they wrote back along the lines of “screw you limey” but it was probably far more polite than that. So I spent a good few of my earliest years on the planet imagining that America had all this amazing technology that we Brits would have to wait a decade for. The only Bazooka Joe gizmo I still wanted by the time I’d hit adolesence was a pair of X-ray Specs, for obvious reasons. In fact my reasons are clearly and precisely described in the t-shirt above, Fat Gold Skull, which, as I’ve said already, rocks.

Fame Tee

Love the sentiment of this tee, and no I don’t mean it’s sentimental, far from it, religion asides, if this is the only life we have to live then I can understand why so many will risk everything to get to the top of the ladder, then again I relate to those who sit back and enjoy the ride. I really think that Bowie said it far better than any other before and since…

Get your taste of glory with Fat Gold’s Live and Die Fame Tee!

Dance Tee (People Don’t Dance No More)

This (People Don’t Dance No More) tee is so 80’s it’s creating a black hole in my front room, whilst I take a trip down memory lane you might want to take a note of the fat and golden features of this tee. Loving the excessiveness of gold all over, there’s so much I wouldn’t be surprised if FGI start making gold jumpsuits in the future, hey you never know, would look killer if we ever lived in a massive glass domed shopping mall on the moon (or is that just my personal vision of hell?). Loving the gold tooth, the mouth is a little reminiscent of those chattering teeth from joke shops that never made me laugh. I mean has anything from any joke shop ever made you laugh? Whilst I’m at it, has any trick from any magic shop ever amazed and wondered you? I’m sure all those kind of stores were closed down years ago under the trades description act (don’t worry it’s a British thing).

Anyway check out the tiny four letter word at the end of the slogan, “tour”, very funny, or is this for real, a tour of people who don’t dance (no more)? Here’s the facts, in the 80s British guys didn’t dare dance, they’d be beaten up or laughed at or both at the same time. Except for the pogo or slamdance which were both just forms of fighting, and then the 90’s came along (with a truck load of drugs) and everyone started to boogie. I suppose the effects have worn off now and we’re back to shuffling around the bar or by one of the walls in the dark. George A. Romero was right but here’s the killer, it’s us who are the zombies!!! Arrgggh. Someone please start shooting before we eat each others brains out.

Okie dokie, check ‘em out, they’re fat, they’re gold, they’re Fat Gold.

**One little technical point regarding the site design – if you find yourself directly on a product page the “back button” doesn’t work, it maybe just in a Firefox browser or a general Javascript problem or the fact that should you find a page without entering the main site you’ll find yourself typing in the address just to get back :/

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