T-Shirt Reviews Blog

Posted: 28 Aug 2010 05:55 AM PDT

British t-shirt brand Confound at ConfoundYourFriends.com has only been running a month but they’ve already got three strong designs on offer and are offering worldwide delivery so you can tell they’re serious. Created by Dean Claydon, James Hayday and John Greene. They first met at high school in Essex, the three have featured in multiple bands together before all moving on to university. Now either graduates or entering their final year, their passion is to build a fashion brand that literally ‘confounds’ the expectations of the mainstream. Within weeks of launching the site they’re marketing the label hard, grabbing favours wherever they can, and adding on all those little extras you expect from more established indie labels. There are even free wallpapers of their designs on offer.

Right now Confound are looking for new artists if you fancy touting your wares to this savvy trio, there’s a great feature on the process of design at their label and details on how to submit your own here. If you’d rather leave the hard work to others and simply keep up with all the latest goings ons including new designs and special offers then you can contact them via Facebook, Twitter or read up at their blog. In the meantime check these three tees out…

Float On Tee

Cute, probably not the strongest design of the three but the illustration has been given something of a gentle touch, which I’m sure will appeal to girls. Reminds me a little of movies like E.T and Le Ballon Rouge. I’d scrap the text, or at least improve the typography, it looks like a generic handwriting font. Something that “rises before the eyes” would make more sense, like steam perhaps, although steam isn’t known for either being easy to write with or draw lol. Still nice, a nice design, a warm feeling tee with a night time slant by one of Confound’s founders Dean Claydon from Essex who usually specialises web based design but dabbles with illustration from time to time too! Get it for £13.99 in sizes S-L.

Shark Bite Tee

It’s the classic JAWS get out clause, if you’ve got a killer shark on your tail throw something explosive or at the very least combustible in its mouth and shoot! Not sure if dynamite functions as well when its wet but the composition is strong and the timer is a nice touch. I’d have liked to have seen the tail on the back of this tee, but that’s a little tricky for a new label. Still am I the only one who still likes all-over printing? Nevertheless a bold design by Sarah Yu London based illustrator, character and graphic designer, the girl definitely has talent, look at those creepy eyes and perspective of the nose and teeth, cool. Get it in all sizes for men and women at £13.99 each.

Howling Wolf Tee

This is their best-seller and you can tell, it’s a really strong design, but lightly illustrated to appeal to girls and guys, it’s rare to find greys in a t-shirt print these days but it works. Moody but not too moody, the wolf really has some character. Designed by Holly Ringsell a talented young illustrator and photographer from the South East of England. Get it in all sizes for £13.99 each.

You can order any of these from just about anywhere in the world, the shipping costs are free for the UK, £5 for Europe and a very reasonable £7.50 for the rest of the world. Take a closer look at Confound Clothing at www.confoundyourfriends.com.

Hawaiian Shirts Are Dead In The Water

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 05:57 PM PDT

The kind of gear that surfers and snowboarders wear these days puts the past to shame. Surfwear has been particularly bad in the past, there was the retro period, the day-glo era, a dragged-out obsession with big-panted Australian fashion, and a few other humdingers, but now, even if you’ve never stood on a board in your life you can easily find boardwear that will put even the most niche and clique urbanwear to shame. Take Kamikaze Boarding from Brighton UK for example… Ah Brighton, I “studied” my arts degree there, alongside class C narcotics and sexy babes, but that’s another story. Kamikaze definitely have a slick operation going on here, their site is super savvy, some nice little Flash movies and some very tight designs in their collections.

I’d have liked a zoom navigation on the product images, but then again I may just be picky, what do I mean “may”! Still, the thing is their designs look even better really close up, but sticking my nose to the screen isn’t my favourite of pastimes. What impressed me most about the collection is that it managed to throw a few surprises at me, for instance their Ride T-Shirt takes me back to the beautifully minimalist design ethic of magazine layouts in the early 80′s, you know iD, Face and so on. Although I’m not keen on all the logos everywhere, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The thing about fashion logos if you have to be really really big, I mean to the point you have factories and international distributors before you can plaster it over everything in your collection. Nowadays even the (evil) mega-global corporate brands out there have realised the public are sick of advertising their wares, almost to the point where they’re begin to hide the logo, or at least secrete it somewhat.

Talking of evil corporations, Kamikaze Boarding are what you might call their nemesis when it comes to business practice, I mean these guys are greener than green and fairer than fair. They use fair trade manufacturers for their shirts and the whole process of production from start to finish has a 90% reduced carbon footprint – which is kind of amazing really. Then again you could say that their business relies more heavily than most on us having a clean environment, who wants to surf oil or board down a dry mountain?

Lifestyle World

Saturday, 28 August 2010