Frog Faced Souply

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     British tees, Frog Faced Souply, Scottish t-shirts, fair trade, original, screen printed tees

Here’s another new kid on the block, Frog  Faced Souply, straight off you know they’re serious about their tees, the site is smart, the name is mad, and the designs are hot to trot. In case you’re still scratching your head about the name well… ‘souply’ is an old colloquialism for the word ‘supply in a supple manner’ (I’m none the wiser either) and the frog face, well that could be anyone. Still, who cares, it’s a cool name for a brand and that’s all that matters.

So, they’ve decided to launch at the very end of the summer, not the best time to do it but with the 24/7 365 days a year online world at their fingertips it shouldn’t hold them back too much. It’s run by a talented and very friendly couple Gary and Louise from their base in Hamilton, Scotland, a true cottage industry indeed, or should that be croft? They’re probably working from a spanking new industrial unit but it’s nice to dream of them weaving their own cloth by a loch with deer tapping at the door for a little bread and gravy. Sorry, Chris is away for a few days at Bestival in I.O.W so I’m feeling a little poetic and forlorn today.

Anyway, on with the tees, there are three available right now and they are, I promise you, blinding designs, definitely a great start to what could be a rather exciting collection. Every tee is fair trade and is screen printed by hand and they’re offering an amazingly competitive shipping rate, a flat fee of £3 anywhere in the world. Wow.

Crash! Boom! Blat! Tee

There’s definitely a cultural/age crossover going on between Gary and myself. I too read the Beano in my most formative years, although I quickly defected to Marvel and DC, comics like Viz definitely revived the British “funnies” tradition in the world of comics. The Crash! Boom! Blat! Tee celebrates the under appreciated art of the comic book sound effect. When something does it’s job well, most people ignore it, it feels so natural you don’t think twice about it. This is one of those instances. I for one have always recognised the powerful iconography of this near “invisible” art form. A nostalgic graphic bonanza available for £22 in all sizes at the store.

Diamonds Tee

I was born a year after the release of the legendary Beatles album ‘Sergeant Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band’, my parents were very very young and my earliest memories are of SPLHCB being played over and over again. I did something very similar with Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ in my teens, although that involved consuming something stronger than Farley’s Rusks. FFS (the brand’s acronym explains everything) offer up a very appealing semi-abstract design influenced by the classic tripper tune ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’, John denied the association with acid (L.S.D) but come on, just listen to it and tell me it isn’t. The Diamonds Tee does two things I love, and at the same time, it’s the ultimate visual mash up printed on a cotton tee. Taking inspiration from the tripped out hippy culture and mixing it up with vector graphics synonymous with arcade games of the early 80′s (a la Asteroids, Tempest etc.). This t-shirt rocks, and then some. Get it for £22 in all sizes here.

Girls Girls Girls Tee

Nothing to do with the awful Mötley Crüe hit this sexy number offers more than first meets the eye. Ooh cheeky. If you want to shock your mum, once she’s found her reading glasses and inspected your washing, then this is the tee for you. It might not help you pull on the dance floor but you will earn the respect of other drunken pervs at the bar :p Seriously well drawn, beautifully in fact, it looks like this was originally an ink ‘n’ wash drawing. Far classier than the subject implies… Get it for £22 in all sizes here.

Keep up to date with all the goings on at Frog Faced Souply at their blog, Facebook and Twitter.

Proletarian Threads – Come The Revolution!

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Anti Bush, anarchist, anarchy, eco tees, fair trade, liberal, liberal tees, political t-shirts, politics, proletarian threads, proletarianthreads.com

Come the revolution there’s only one place I’d recommend buying your t-shirts – if it doesn’t go against your Marxist principles :) – and that’s ProletarianThreads.com. Now as many of you might have guessed I’m a bit of a lefty myself, an all-round trouble maker and I have always had a soft spot for those with similar leanings. PT tick all the right boxes for me, and then some, they produce and sell some of the snazziest sweatshop-free, political, feminist and generally revolutionary t-shirts this side of The New World Order, and this side being the losing side (for the time being anyway).

If you want to guarantee avoiding being lined up against the nearest wall and shot by a revolutionary firing line, should the day come that the world governments finally lose it and the people rise up and take back everything they can get their hands on, including their human rights, land, and the means of production from the Bourgeoisie then PT is probably a good bet. Although I’m not as hot on Marxist theory as I was in my student days I’m sure that PT count as part of the merchant classes and hence members of the bourgeoisie but I wouldn’t hold that against them, I mean who actually toils in the fields these days, that’s what combine harvesters are for aren’t they?

read more

50% Off at BrandOfTheFree.com

admin    T-Shirt News     Environmental, anti-sweatshop, brand of the free, brandofthefree.com, earth day, earth green, eco, eco-chic, eco-friendly earth-friendly, environment, ethical, fair trade, fairtrade, natural organic, sustainable

If you’re after a stylish bargain or two check out the latest tees on offer at BrandOfTheFree.com – this t-shirt company is as ethical as they come, only using organic shirts and water-based inks to produce their unique line of highly original urban streetwear for men and women. Here are their discount codes, but hurry this is a limited offer so first come first served!

Buy 1 t-shirt and get 30% off at checkout. Use offer code – SAVEARTH
Buy 2 or more tees and get 50% off at checkout. Use offer code – FALL50

Their titles include ‘Lasting Liberty‘, ‘Support Local Farmers‘, ‘Open Mic‘ (about free speech) and ‘Protect US‘ amongst others. read more

LightningFast.com – T-Shirts That Save Lives

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Africa, Charities, Charity T-Shirts, charity, designer t-shirts, donations, ethical t-shirts, fair trade, good causes, organic t-shirts, poor, t-shirt

A mission statement from Steve Savides at LightningFast.com:-

“When you buy a T-shirt, what do you get? A bit of warmth? A bit of cool? How about real change? When you buy Lightning Fast clothing, you’re helping transform communities. That’s because we channel 50% of our profits into projects that are proven in helping children and families escape a cycle of poverty. At Lightning Fast, we’re about combining the love of cool with the love of change. It’s a virtuous circle. You get great design on organic, fairly traded clothes. And people from Romania to Swaziland to South Africa, UK, are given a hand to build sustainable lives.” read more

T-Shirt Designers – Clean up your act with FairWear!

admin    T-Shirt News     European law, ethical fashion, fair trade, fair trade t-shirts, fair wear, fairtrade, fairwear, fashion industry, human rights, workers rights

In case you are a t-shirt designer, run a t-shirt store or label, or indeed create or sell any kind of clothing, you might be interested in the Fairwear Foundation who focus on ensuring that the garment industry finally cleans up its act and directly influences the rights of workers for all their suppliers and manufacturers. If you regularly order t-shirts from international suppliers and manufacturers it maybe worth reading on and seeing what pressure you can apply!

Since the late 90′s The Netherlands have been campaigning for ‘clean clothes’, i.e clothing created ethically and with fair workers’ rights no matter the source. FWF regularly inspect source suppliers across the world, including human rights’ hotspots such as India, Indonesia and Romania.

read more

Three Cheers for Eco Gear!

admin    T-Shirt News     eco clothing, eco fashion, eco t-shirts, eco tees, ethical fashion, ethical t-shirts, fair trade, organic inks

I’ve featured ecological t-shirt sites at Buy Tees before, but Canadian-based Eco-Gear.ca has to be the most ethical and ecologically aware t-shirt manufacturer and printer in the world. I was going to wait until I’d collated a few more sources for organic t-shirt suppliers/printers because I’ve had a few requests for more lists, but I couldn’t let this wait.

Here’s a quick rundown of Ecogear‘s amazing ethical and environmental credentials:

- recycled materials in pre-consumer cotton clippings and recycled water bottles( 65% cotton and 35% recycled PET )
– least water and energy needed to produce the fabric
– no bleach or dyes used. Their colours are from the first life cotton clippings.
– no land use for agriculture or need for deforestation
– for their printing processes, instead of being back end conscious and filtering all wastes, they are front end conscious and only use dyes that are either organic or water based.No PVC, pthalates or APEOs.

read more

Contrary To Rumours – I Am Still Alive! The Axis of T-Shirts, SEO, and Social Bookmarking.

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     design, fair trade, fashion, indie, organic, printers, sell tees, selling tshirts, social bookmarking t-shirts, t-shirtcountdown.com, t-shirts marketing, tshirtprinter

Yes, turn your back on your blog for just a day or two and suddenly your inbox is filled with e-commiserations tentatively asking ‘where the hell is the beef Paul’?

I’ll tell you where the beef is, it’s creeping up behind you and aiming to actually form a real network around you, before you’ve even had a chance to close that browser page. Exaggerations aside, I am in the midst of building a few more t-shirt-related sites to pique your interest and eventually trap you in my Axis of T-Shirts – where no t-shirt creative or fanatic may ever escape alive. read more

Social Conscience T-Shirt Competition @ DistrictCotton.com

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Cotton, District, Ecology, Environmental, Threadless, eco, fair trade, green, organic t-shirts, submit t-shirt design, t-shirt competition

Submit to Your Social Conscience – Submit Your Eco Tee!

I was immersed in a “PHP programming hell” of my own making, desperately trying to install a directory script for TshirtPrinter.org* , when a very welcome distraction arrived in my inbox from Brett Novick of DistrictCotton.com. Brett wanted me to bring everyone’s attention to the latest round of their Ethical T-Shirt Design Competition – The theme is ‚ÄúBig City‚Äù, and it will benefit a very worthy cause, the charity “Brooklyn’s Trees Not Trash.” You can vote for any of the designs here or if you’d like to submit a t-shirt (read the guidelines first buddy!), you can email them here. This May/June the contest will benefit Trees Not Trash in Bushwick (or East Williamsburg) – Submissions are accepted until June 20.

The Prize is $300 cash, plus a $100 gift certificate to DC, plus $250 every time they reprint the shirt. read more

Fair Trade Eco T-Shirts – a designers’ dilemma

admin    T-Shirt News     T-Shirts, eco, environment, fair trade, fairtrade, green, sweatshops, tshirts

There’s a moral obligation for all t-shirt designers to try and pressure the industry, alongside the consumer, to practice business more ethically. This for me is a completely different argument to judging the conditions of the Third World from a First World perspective. Here the only people who we can blame are the t-shirt printers and textile industries of the West, which is fine and dandy with me! read more