There’s flash. there’s plush, there’s cool, there’s funny, there’s crazy, and then there’s these guys, their style? Well if you can call it that, a ragtag muddle of crazy artists and designers, their style is so way off the scale I’m all out of adjectives (for once). All I can say is they make me feel sick in a good way, not sick with envy, not sick of the sight of anything in particular, but a strange and rather wonderful home sickness for a life I’ve never had.

If only the friends of my youth had been as together (and untogether) as this demoniacal motley crew I’d have probably started a revolution of some sorts by now, oh to be as reckless and carefree as these loonies.

Sure it looks like a kid drew it, but this kid did it first! I mean if you’re going to target anything on the net for a bit of healthy yet highly cynical rib-tickling then Google has to be high on your list. I can’t stand the way we’re all Googled up to the hilt, at least the spell-checker offers some consolation, it’s obvious Google hasn’t quite made it to status of a verb (quite yet), although I wouldn’t be surprised if The Oxford Dictionary isn’t busy scribbling that one in right now. Google is a bummer, it means funny, witty, interesting, novel lunatics have to compete with clever so-and-so’s who live their lives through the mantra of search engine optimisation. Search and Destroy, if you must, you must.

Tees for Sale is downright nasty! I was going to show one of Das Monick’s prettier tees, but I couldn’t resist this ugly mofo. After all it reminds me of home, which is right here, in a tacky seaside town at the nether end of the UK. It’s dark and miserable out there right now, the beach is most likely swirling under a storm of spume and brine, but I won’t even bother looking out of the window because I’ve seen it all before. God it’s so the end of the Summer, even the tacky little souvenir shops on the promenade have lost all their charm, there’s nothing worse than a British seaside town on the downward slope to Winter. This t-shirt says it all for me, a handmade sign in a dirty old gift shop that you’d never normally bother with, except there’s nothing else to do now, you’re stuck, this is your only choice, this or oblivion. Someone pass me the sleeping pills please.

OMG Keren Richter you are hardcore, yes she is, don’t argue with her. Boxing by Keren Richter. What can I say? Am I getting old? Most probably. Do I like this, I’m not sure. Should it really be a t-shirt, who cares, it’s a work of gratuitous genius. If you’re going to get nasty at least make sure it involves two scantily clad women I say. Then again Keren has deftly managed to reduce the eroticism in this image to a near zero, it’s just jaw dropping isn’t it? I mean, ouch mate, that looks painful. I wouldn’t be surprised if Keren modelled for this one herself, I wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of her after a hard night’s drinking, especially if all I have to protect me are a pair of pants (that’s UK pants by the way, not the American sort.) Wear it if you dare!

Phew! …I’m sure you’re thinking. Yep a nice simple and rather attractive tee by Tiffany Malakooti, there’s probably no deep message here, it just looks great, and besides my girlfriend loves it so I thought I’d better include Feather. I’m loving Tiffany’s surname by the way, I’m thinking of changing mine, it might get me a little more attention for my own artwork instead of these reviews, ah well you can’t have everything. I’ve got a boring name but at least I can spend all day (and night and day) reviewing tees and moaning about the weather eh?

Ah, my student days, when everything that didn’t work, everything split, torn, burnt or broken was inexplicably left to rot in the garden for a year or so. But at least Travis can really doodle – man oh man! Travis Millard’s House is a veritable ode to slobbery, if only more people took his attitude we wouldn’t be living in a credit crunch right now. I remember when people were happy to make do, no matter how bad things got, it was called poverty, and no bank would touch you then.

Even a decade or so ago, if you broke it you fixed it, if you didn’t you had to live with it. I just saw a vid about all the junk the West sends over to China and India; old computers, TV’s, electronics of all kinds. No one seems to know how to fix anything these days, instead we just chuck it out and buy more. But not for long. Soon we’ll all be begging them to send it back, and we’ll pay, it’s all swings and roundabouts I suppose.

Like I said, like all these rather insane artists say – Blood is The New Black – now get your skates on!

Luckily the current generation of NZ fashion addicts can rest easy, Kowtow.com has it all under control. They tick so many my style boxes, that it’s hard to fault anything about these guys. For a start their designs mix the absurdist theatrics and wordplay of the Surrealists with a highly acute sense of style, something reminiscent of both American underground comics of the 60′s and the early British punk movement of the 70′s. Stylish and funny, gritty and colourful, it’s been fun roaming their collection, there should be something there for all of you to enjoy.

I was rather perturbed by the prices, fortunately they’ve shown all of them in New Zealand currency, rather confusing at first, but not quite as pricey as I’d initially thought. Many of their tees are on sale right now at $52.25 NZ which is actually around $34.8250 USD. Furthermore all of their designer t-shirts (and hoodies) are fully certified fairtrade and organic by the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation and certified organic by the Control Union Group, which goes some way to explaining the higher price tag. I think this is a problem we’ll all be facing in the future, with rising costs around the world smaller creative companies will have to consider outsourcing farther and farther afield to compensate the costs, and their respective accumulating carbon footprints.

Bus T-Shirt. I’ve heard of a road to hell, but a bus to purgatory? The adventure of travel is over, or at least it is for now (barring a sudden development in warp-drive technology). Almost every square inch of this planet has felt the weight of a human presence, whilst we as a race continue to grow exponentially. Within 20 years we could have a population of more than 9 billion. Our urban conurbations have grown to the size of all the earliest kingdoms of the world. Ancient Rome had less than a million inhabitants, modern London has almost 8 million inhabitants, Mumbai over 13 million.

We will have to get used to the fact that from the day we were born someone somewhere has already seen what we have not even imagined. Beyond that, what we do find on our travels pales in comparison to our own imagination. I have ventured forth the idea in many a drunk argument that we are in fact living in purgatory right now. There are hells on earth to be sure, but they are mostly the making of an evil dictator, the cruel fate of nature, or our own idiocy as a race. Without a journey of the unknown, a travelogue of the senses, we are all in our own self-made purgatories. If re-incarnation does exist, could I please book my next life on another planet? This one has lost all its sense of adventure.

Banana T-Shirt. You can’t go wrong with a banana, it’s iconic (re: The Velvet Underground), it’s subconsciously offensive to the moral minority (bent phallus), and always seemed a little alien to me, I used to think bananas were from space when I was a kid, gawd knows why. I suppose the pod-like casing did it, and besides it actually felt like a treat compared to most fruit when I was that age, if it tasted good it was alien. British food sucked even worse then than it does now. Then again we were all poorer in the UK, we couldn’t rely on refrigerated tankers hauling them across the sea every week, and the climate wasn’t even warm enough for greenhouses (except the Summer of 1976).

So what’s Kowtow up to? A tribute? A phallus? A call for all of us to eat more fruit? It doesn’t really matter, the image is proven, it works, and so much better than most fruit-based connotations out there. a pineapple = a cheesy tropical holiday, an apple = religion, learning to spell, dentists, a grape = a drunk…

Corset T-Shirt. This sexy little number is for the girls, it’s simple and direct and definitely creates an impact as a t-shirt. I’m not usually keen on trompe l’oeil or rather, illusory t-shirts or any fashion of that ilk (piano key tie?). I’ve created a few of my own and know how corny most of them are, but this works and I think it’s all down to the laborious contraption they’ve featured. I’m assuming it’s a Victorian or Edwardian undergarment here, and we all know the hell women went through back then in the name of beauty.

I know that women these days do much the same, but I can’t imagine any self-respecting girl deciding to have a few ribs removed to perfect her hourglass figure. You can take a pair of fake breasts out, you can’t put a pair of ribs back in. The corset is a perfect representation of the divide between man’s desire for woman and woman’s need for perfection of beauty.

There’s plenty to think about at Kowtow and they take no prisoners with their designer collection, so prepared to be shocked, cajoled, titillated, and flabbergasted by this New Zealand team of art bullies!

P.S To further bring awareness to Kowtow’s ethical garments, Kowtow is supporting independent and unsigned artists by giving away a free compilation c.d. with each Winter ’08 garment!