I only came across T-Post the other day, my partner Christina stumbled upon an article about the label at Annie Spandex, (one of our favourite indie fashion blogs out there), and I have to admit the concept is startlingly impressive. What’s more their challenging magazine topics and editorial finesse are backed up by a fantastic selection of top of the line illustrations and designs. Rest assured when it comes to style T-Post don’t take their eye off the ball for a minute. This is one of those rare occasions where I’m tempted to pry an interview out of this brand, at least one person running the show has to have a rather, how can I put this, ‘left field’ mind to conjure up this supremely logical yet surreal idea for a t-shirt company.

The natural extension to the idea of themed tees and themed collections is here, T-Post is a logical progression on the thinking behind all the themed contests and competitions available at so many t-shirt sites and communities these days. They have some great artists under their wing including Patrik Soderstam,Andy Rementer, John Nordqvist, Steven Burke and the absolutely crazy Jeremyville. I can assure you I know ‘big’ when I see it, sometimes I wish I was rich (amongst other reasons) just so I could invest in companies like this. On paper their business plan may seem insane, I’m sure they’ve had their run of doubting Thomas bank managers in their time, but I for one can see T-Post taking off in a big big way.

Let’s browse this veritable library of challenging art shirts, a feast for both the eyes and the mind!

Unlike your usual t-shirt store, if you want T-Post’s tees you’ll need to sign up for a subscription, for ‚Ǩ19 (plus ‚Ǩ7 shipping) you’ll receive a t-shirt/magazine every 6 weeks until you cancel. Unfortunately there’s no way to order back issues of now, but perhaps if I can wangle a few freebies from them I’ll hold a quickie contest and offer a giveaway prize, no promises though! Anyway as promised, my top picks (so far) at T-Post.

Who Is Big Brother Anyway? Tee

This is issue 24 of T-Post’s t-shirt mag, dealing with the Big Brother phenomenon, not the TV series but the rise of surveillance culture and oppressive government in just about every democratic society in the world. The fact is, and if I may be forgiven for being blunt, it’s as if Stalin and Hitler have won the day after all. No matter your opinions on the 9/11 tragedy, conspiracy or not, the truth is that the USA and Europe have used this terrible event as an excuse to spy on everyone, no matter who they are, often without cause. Freedom has been sold up the river, in the UK we are the most watched people in the world, with on average one CCTV camera to every 14 inhabitants. Online surveillance is also completely out of control, with everyone from governmental authorities to major corporations, even hackers, spying on citizens of the world 24/7. Come the revolution, should it ever come, it will most definitely be televised. Designed by Patrik Soderstam this supreme piece of political t-shirt design has to be up there with my all-time faves in this particular niche.

Super Drugs Tee

Unfortunately Swedish artist Ragnar Persson doesn’t have a website at the moment, but he’s definitely making waves in his part of the world, and I can see why. This t-shirt marks the rise of the pharmaceutical industry over the last century. The new ‘keepers of consciousness’, the new delivery system for emotional welfare, the new hierarchy of social standards and belief is a chemically induced stupor championed by the most successful drug dealers since time immemorial. If you want to be more knowledgeable, have more intelligence, understand life that little more, you learn, right? Wrong, in the next few years everything from what you think to how what you do to who you think you are will be proscribed by prescription. It makes you wonder if governments actually waste billions even trillions collectively fighting the failed ‘war on drugs’ simply because they can’t collect the tax and save face. No matter, their boffins, the lab-coated masters of the universe are about to cure all with a whole wave of new Super Drugs. Cognitive enhancement is the new watchword. Take a look at a few sci-fi films for more of an idea of where we are heading, THX 1138 deals with a society under the control of chemically balanced emotions and thoughts. Gattaca goes one step further and introduces the idea of genetics along the same lines. It ain’t fiction any more folks!

Negotiating A War Tee

In issue 47 T-Post deal with the ongoing war between file-sharers and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), essentially, well at least up until now, you get what you pay for. In the industrial age there weren’t any quibbles regarding the merits or value of a product, monetary or otherwise. Yet now, here we are in, for the lack of a better description the information age, and a lot of it is free. That’s the bottom line, the human psyche has a great deal of trouble equating the non-corporeal world with monetary value. Ironically our money is just light floating around a billion servers, only ever self-evident when it appears on a screen or is on a rare occasion eschewed for cash from a local hole-in-the-wall. If every person in the world withdrew all their money in cash today we’d all realise that the governments, let alone the banks don’t have it. They never even printed it. A recent figure for the USA is around 3% of the economy exists as printed money, the rest is up in the air. I understand the argument that musicians and actors should be for what they do, but exactly how much? Should it be enough to cover the fines, say those slapped upon Ammie Thomas, a single mother, who was recently sued for sharing 24 songs. The jury found her guilty and sentenced her to pay $80,000 per song ‚Äì that is, $1.92 million in total? That much? More? Visual artists can limit what they produce and rely on the rarity of their works. Actors can act upon the stage. Musicians can play gigs. There’s a whole history of paid performances out there. Beethoven didn’t receive a slice of the profits every time his work was played in a dingy backstreet music hall somewhere in the poorer quarters of Eastern Europe. He was commissioned by royalty to compose symphonies, he was paid to perform, but there was no RIAA back then, and so he couldn’t sue, even if he wanted to. I’m not sure what the future holds for the entertainment business, hopefully a more creative one where consumers begin to produce what they want to see and share it freely. If people want to contribute all the better. The only reason you should ever have to pay nearly $2 million for 24 songs is if you own the rights to them! A great tee by Siggi Eggertsson, nicely abstracted, something on the lines of a melting testcard? Check out the rest of Siggi’s work at www.vanillusaft.com.

The Cosmos And Our Inner Child Tee

One more before I roll, this issue 27, The Cosmos and Our Inner Child tee by Jeremyville, a crazy artist with his own interpretation on just about everything you could imagine. I love his way out there work, this time dealing with the crowded orbit of the Earth. Everything from sattelites to space stations to space debris, and now it seems weapons are floating around up there. Some are spying on us, some are spying on each other, others are ready to destroy enemy spies who dare to float over unwelcome. It’s a mess, I’m surprised that astronomers can see a thing up there, radio telescopes or no radio telescopes. Well as they say, or at least I do, know one can hear you dump in space.

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