No matter how open minded you may think yourself, the truth is the world (with no small contribution from the media) happen to apply cultural stereotypes to just about every country out there. For instance there are many Americans who have never travelled outside their own borders, or at least no further than Tijuana and yet they still appear to think that Britain still ride around on horses wearing bowler hats and pin stripe suits whilst drinking cups of tea from bone china cups. The same ethos applies to India, most Western designers (especially those in fashion) have been stuck with the same ideas since the 1960s, mandalas, multi-limbed and animal-headed deities, you know the score, the same old ideas rehashed ad-infinitum.

Chor Bazaar offer a selection of highly original t-shirts at their on-line store www.cbaz.com, that should at least raise a few eyebrows, perhaps there’s change in the air, following the success of the multi Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, more and more people around the world have been drawn in by the radical cultural, sociological and technological changes now happening in India. Chor Bazaar are ready and set to capitalise on this new wave of enthusiasm for Indian identity and will push the Zeitgeist as far as they can, their first offerings certainly reflect their modern, contemporary and highly individualistic approach to fashion design.

All of Chor Bazaar’s graphics are designed and silk screened in their Brooklyn, workshop. Most of their t-shirts are fashion-fit, vintage soft, 100% ring-spun cotton. The team at CB include their designer Umang, in fact Chor Bazaar’s roots stem from his RISD architecture thesis which offered a redefinition of Hindu Architecture for first generation Indians in the United States. Yash, Umang’s brother is the businessman behind the company, they shared their father’s dream of promoting positive and relevant Indian culture in America, and could see immediately how the idea of an Indian-fusion t-shirt collection could do just that.

The future is here, the future is now, it stretches across continents from the USA to India and it’s filled with surprises, fusing cultures, styles and attitudes in a whole new way – read on to see just how different the real India is…

Muh Kala T-Shirt

This design is based upon a familiar sight on India’s streets and highways, it’s the back of a funky Indian truck, many of which are elaborately decorated in painted murals, sculptures and icons from across the spectrum of Indian culture. Take a look at this group at Flickr for more amazing Indian truck pictures for an idea of how far some of the owners will go to make an impression! The Muh Kala t-shirt for men also sports a rather snazzy logo motif on the back (as do all their tees) and is available for a very reasonable $20.

Ambassador T-Shirt

The Ambassador t-shirt continues the transportation theme, this time featuring another familiar sight in India (although not as familiar as it was in the past), built by the Hindustan Motors Ltd., India’s first car manufacturer who started production in 1942. In the course of time they have become a vast corporation, in 1957 they began to produce The Ambassador, popularly used as taxi cabs and described by some as the “Cadillac of India”. They certainly have earned a warm place in the hearts of this India’s society. This is a slice of real retro Indian culture, the design is based on an old Morris Oxford (in fact they used the same press plates as Morris for many years) but with modern tastes moving away from the traditional (the Ambassador was last remodelled in 1992), many drivers in India have opted for rival manufacturers and imports much like consumers have done so in British and Russian car markets. This tee is available for men and women again at just $20.

Cyber Paisley T-Shirt

Blending two extremes of Indian society, the tradition of the textiles industry with India’s burgeoning technocracy, technology and tradition can work hand in hand, and here’s the proof! This highly unique design displays a great confidence both technically and as an interpretive iconography for the future. A wonderful take on the traditional culture of India, the Cyber Paisley tee is available for both men and women priced at $20.

India Stamp T-Shirt

See the Ashoka lions roar, you can almost touch the history in this one, spanning the centuries from the times of (perhaps one of the greatest leaders in history) Ashoka The Great, through the despotic tyranny of the British Raj, right up to the present day and India’s modern society, modern people and uniquely heartfelt nostalgia for their past and great hope for the future. This design emits a great deal of pride in India with a simple yet bold design, I would really like to see this image printed a lot larger as as t-shirt, however it’s a powerful tee all the same. The India Stamp tee is available for both men and women priced at $20.

See the rest of this delightful collection at Chor Bazaar plus make sure to visit their blog for all the latest updates, definitely worth broadening your horizons!

MOMA even bought a few of his toys in 2007, and almost all the designers who’ve ever worked with him have gone on to fame and fortune in their own right, Budnitz is a magnet for publicity, style, cool kids and kudos. The t-shirt collection has built up quite nicely over the years and seeing as I found myself drooling over the designs there (once again) I thought I’d share a few of my favourites with you.

If you want any of these beware, apart from a few select stores and their own online shop you’ll have trouble tracking these down, besides which just about anything that leaves the KR stable ends up as a collector’s piece (some of his toys sell for up to $20,000 these days), so if you like it I’d nail it a.s.a.p.

Redrum by Frank Kozik, one of the least cute tees at KR, but just as confident in panache and flair, I love the splattered blood, fish guts never looked so appetising. If you’ve not heard of Kozik (where have you been?), he’s been credited with single-handedly reviving the medium of the concert poster. Originally from Spain he’s been praised for some of the coolest posters, album covers and flyers out there. Now based in California, he’s worked for years in the left field of the alternative music scene; designing for artists like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Neil Young, Sonic Youth, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane’s Addiction, Ice T, George Clinton, Green Day, Beck, The Offspring, He’s cool, I promise you. Check out his incredible prints and look out for his Snorkin’ Labbits at KR. Anyway Redrum is most likely a reference to the classic horror movie ‘The Shining’ so you really can’t go wrong with this shirt!

Slick, slick, slick. So slick I’m slipping off the page. As a designer you know when you’ve got it just right and KR surely has with the Radial Halftone Tee. So Op Art, so Pop Art, so cool. I’ve seen a lot of abstract tees, and a whole heap of halftones but it takes a very big pair of designer cahunas to slap it down at this scale and let it stare at you, right in the face. It’s hitting me right between the eyes and I’m not spinning off in a bad acid flashback, he must be doing something right.

Here’s one more for the road, the Kidrobot Head Tee (Blue) for Women. You can get this in red too, and there’s a torso chunk version for the guys, I love it, very deco, very pre-Disney when toons were always scary and weird without meaning to be. All the essential design elements are there, a nod to Manga, the pie-dish eyes of yesteryear, and even a fin to keep it streamlined. But what’s best is the fact it’s not a piddling little graphic floating in the middle of a sea of blue cotton, KR really understands how much scale can top off a perfect design.

Check out all the tees, sweats, hoodies and of course some mad, mad toys at Kidrobot.com – go on have some fun!

R.A.G Clothing opened its doors in NY in 1959 and has since expanded its number of stores to 5 locations across Manhattan. My partner came across RAG Clothing on a recent trip and was surprised (and relieved) to find their inimitable range of stylish designer t-shirts and urban wear are available online. They offer a great line in graphic art shirts although I’d say their men’s tees outclass the women’s by miles. There’s also a small selection of I Love New York tees for those of you who can’t quite afford a weekend fix of NY right now, though again they aren’t quite on the same level as their graphic t-shirts.

Graphic Crow Prisoner T-Shirt (in white and grey) for Men.

This is one hell of an eerie t-shirt but I do love the minimalist use of colour and the superb illustrative style. Very reminiscent of the Hitchcock classic “The Birds” and a dash of Poe, the composition here is strong and works as well in grey as it does in white.

Dreamer T-Shirt (in white, khaki and red) for Men

If you’re a fan of classy distressed tees you should like Dreamer, this t-shirt has a lot of Ancient Greek influences bubbling under the surface, the central character has a lot in common with carved figureheads. The old wooden sculptures you find affixed to the stern of many old ships of times gone by. They were supposed to bring good luck to all those on board by placating the gods of the sea, although I’ve seen quite a few unattached ones in antiques stores and fairs so I’m not sure if the luck spreads any further than the figurehead itself. My advice, if you’re sailing on an old wooden ship and its breaking apart, hang on to the figurehead, they always seem to make it to dry land :p

NYC Map Babydoll T-Shirt (in black white and khaki) for Women.

If you happen to be wearing the NYC Map tee whilst wandering around New York you’ll find your popularity amongst the tourists will shoot up. I love maps, even as a work of art, although I can’t stand those made-up maps that some fantasy artists have a habit of churning out. This all over print babydoll is a real eye-catcher and even if you’re not in New York, or have never been there, it gives you a little worldly-wise clout amongst your friends. I’d have thought it might be more fun to creative a mirror-image version of this so that you can only read it in a compact or a fashion store mirror, then again maybe that would be too vain, even for the NY fashionistas out there.

Snake Warrior T-Shirt (in blue, black and grey) for Men

The Snake Warrior T-Shirt is atypical of many Chinese-style tees out there at the moment, however the choice of image and composition shows some real flair. I’d love to get a translation of the golden text but it would probably be something along the lines of ‘luck’, ‘sex power’ or some wise saying from Confucius along the lines of keep your snake in your trousers, who knows, it’s just a great design.

I’m still at a loss to what R.A.G’s acronym stands for, maybe you can enlighten me. I’d like to see their voting system open to all and not just subscribed shoppers, but apart from that a very snazzy and well thought out t-shirt experience awaits you www.ragnewyork.com.

If I wasn’t a Londoner born and bred (almost – okay a wannabe at the very edges of the suburban/urban flux), I’d want to be a New Yorker. I’m too British now, the damage has been done, and I do like the damage by the way. Each city has it’s own character, but there are many broad similarities in style and content throughout our arts, music and media. Artistically speaking both cities have a tendency to stick up two proverbial fingers to the establishment at every possible opportunity. I’m glad to see that OPMG are following in that same venerable tradition.

I’m busy doing my own thing here in the UK trying to kick up a storm in the arts world, and OPMG are doing the nasty to the NY fashionista clique. It sure is a relief to know there’s more to life than Banksy, that there are plenty more people out there who’s soul aim is to unnerve the staid and grey middle of the road moral majority. Yes revolution is messy, but when you consider how slow the process of evolution, the gain maybe worth the pain.

Now, this one’s called Electro Bangers, and it’s almost t-shirt porn, I mean the whole set-up is nasty, from the cheap pole dancers sliding up and down, to the halftone Warhol backdrop, to the tacky diamond bling. I love it. It punches a hole through social etiquette, picks a fight with political correctness, and after a few heady thrills and spills, heaves open a belly full of misgivings in the back alley of fashion. There’s no deep message, no apologies, no corners cut, except where they need to be. There are no compromises at OPMG, you’re either with them or you’re against them. This t-shirt isn’t asking you to buy it, it’s picking a fight with you if you don’t.

The Whisky Tee takes us down a similar path of attitude and decrepitude, old school was never cool, so why not flaunt it for all its cheap old haggard body is worth? Retro nightmare featuring characters from the Poisonous period of heavy metal, the cringe-laden excess of make-up and beer bellies oozes out of every pore of OPMG’s Whisky tee. It’s a case of wait long enough and everything becomes kitsch, except OPMG have stuck a needle in this little bubble of nostalgia and sucked out all the goodness, perfecting crass into an art form, Whisky proves that the future is always correct, even if it does rely on the opiate of hindsight.

Take a gander at what else is available at One Punch Machine Gun Clothing right now, they really have captured the essence of a hard night’s drinking and fighting in NY through the medium of the t-shirt. Feisty stuff. Uber Cool.

Jeff created Ugmonk in response to the high saturation of cluttered design in the t-shirt fashion market, stripping back the redundant extremities of the over embellished style common to many labels at the moment, providing a stripped-back alternative, relying on the eternal qualities of line and composition. The first 100 of each of his designs include a limited edition screen-printed tag which is a very nice touch.

Jeff’s Lowercase T-Shirt is rather self-explanatory, I’m not quite sure which font he’s used here, but it does reiterate the classic clean look I mentioned earlier, Jeff is all about design, there’s no message, just a whole lot of attention to detail and quality of production. This has to be one of the smartest prints I’ve seen in a while. It would’ve been so easy to have got this wrong and ended up with some kind of smudgy Sesame Street style piece. But he’s managed to overcome any of my doubts with a cool and confident solid t-shirt design that I can easily imagine strutting up a catwalk as part of some high-priced combo draped on a leggy model. Saying that it still has a very unisexual appeal, cosmopolitan yet perfunctory in presentation. Check out this close-up to see the work in full-effect.

Math Problem works along a similar vein, offering the same format in a different font, reintroducing us to the beauty of numbers. Once again he’s managed to side-step any notions of childlike appeal, using bold clean and formal line to head the message home. I’m not sure how much of a math’s problem he’s offering here. I know I’m awful at mathematics, strangely I was well ahead of my years until around my early teens (perhaps girls were more of a personal priority than logarithms), and I’m sure there are rather a lot of airheads in the fashion world, but even I know that two plus three equals five. It may have been more amusing to deliberately offer an incorrect solution, or that may just be another idea for the future, ‘Missed Digit’ perhaps?

Path To Nowhere takes a rather different tack, I’m not quite so keen on this one, perhaps I’m the wrong guy to ask, I went through a spell of drawing labyrinths as a teenager. I had even painted a pair on the boots of a girlfriend-to-be before i scarpered off to college, (we finally got it together and are still with each other now). Labyrinths are fascinating, and many don’t lead anywhere, unlike the traditional mazes you’ll find in most European Regency gardens, labyrinths are mostly carved from rock, many by nature herself. To be labyrinthine would have been considered complex and thoughtful in the past, now it’s a characteristic merely viewed as madness. People don’t have time to waste on the follies of self-exploration, which is a sad old state of affairs.

However, the careful layout and clean lines save the design, ever so slightly reminiscent of the original London Underground Tube map, if it followed the random patterns formed by a kitten playing with a ball of twine. I think a greater selection of colours might bring Path To Nowhere to fruition. I know that Jeff hates clutter, but sometimes directness is not enough in itself.

I hope to see a lot more from Jeff in the future, Ugmonk.com has laid its claim on this particularly attractive niche in the designer t-shirt market, we can only wait and see how this novel collection will expand and proliferate over the coming months.

It’s funny how places can get nicknames, I checked out the origin of New York’s alter ego, and it seems the term was coined by NY jazz musicians of the 1930s and ‚Äò40s, some say it’s to do with the depression and all the apple sellers on the streets, but I think the music scene would’ve been far more influential than a few fruit sellers. Besides there was some kind of crazy jazzy dance back then called the Big Apple too, so not surprisingly the name caught on.

There isn’t much to explain about the Big Apple T-Shirt except that it’s influenced by famous painting The Son of Man by Ren√© Magritte, a Belgian Surrealist with a knack for creating the iconic. You can probably recognise the influence straight away, there aren’t many images out there that obscure a portrait with a giant apple, then again, it could just be an average apple placed close to the viewer.

I have a strange kinship with New York, all it a long-distance relationship, okay yes, in a voyeuristic sense, I do love New York! I haven’t been there, I suppose I should go, my partner has and she enjoyed herself, but she wasn’t ecstatic, I knew why, we’ve been spoiled by a history of film, one tribute after another up until the 1980s when everything on location in New York was actually filmed in Vancouver and other less populated, less memorable cities. I suppose no where can live up to my expectations these days, it’s no one’s fault in particular, just the wealth of filmography that has used New York city as a backdrop to countless stories.

I’m sure plenty of New Yorkers will be rolling their eyes by now, it’s true, how can I tell what New York is like from across the Atlantic, well, I do know that every city I’ve lived in or visited has become busier, more crowded, more congested and more polluted than the last. It’s practical to create a megatropolis in the midst of an Industrial Revolution, even at the beginning of an Information Age, but soon, very soon people begin to realise they don’t need to commute, the oil crisis will speed up the process, and more and more lumbering behemoth corporations will experience a painful commuter burnout. Then we’ll see the rise of the local economy once more, a resurgence for convenience and practicality. Then New York, London and many other incredible cities can make some room, and all we’ll use them for is entertainment, the arts, cultural and historical experiences, trade, and shopping for luxury goods, it’s what they were built for in the first place. In times gone by the only people who lived in a city lived in squalor or owned a serious chunk of real estate. Funny how things always turn full circle if you wait long enough.

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