Pop Culture Care Package: Novelty T-Shirts Round-Up
A little retail therapy for you this evening
I’m very susceptible to a novelty t-shirt. I’ve acquired a fair number of both t-shirts and cozy-but-cute sweatshirts during quarantine, and I know I’m not the only one. Here are some of my favorites, including some I’ve had for a while and a few I still have my eye on.
Not subtle, but I feel like subtlety is a little overrated these days. Say what you came to say and get on with things! Out Of Print is always a reliable source, and I was glad to snag their evergreen Pride & Prejudice x Flashdance sweatshirt and this adorable Little Golden Books one in a recent sale. I’ll Eat You Up is currently only available in straight sizes S, M, and L, but it’s also on sale at the moment, so if those sizes suit, go get yourself a lightweight literary coziness machine!
I’ve seen fully 90% of Food Twitter in this legume-celebrating shirt, a fundraiser for World Central Kitchen via Bon Appétit’s shop. It’s currently sold out in all sizes, but they seem to bring in-demand products back into stock and release new designs pretty regularly, so keep an eye out. Next on my list are the Claire’s Hair Gourmet Makes shirt and the new Brad Leone Glossary one.
Dame Margaret turned me onto the delights of Super Yaki shirts, which celebrate beloved yet somehow under-appreciated delights of popular cinema. I recently welcomed Penny Marshall into my home, along with a Nora Ephron shirt that I very much wish I could recommend to you, but which isn’t even on the website at present. I will be keeping an eye out for its triumphant, longed-for return and notify you if I spy it again! Why do we need t-shirts proclaiming ourselves to be Penny Marshall & Nora Ephron films? Well, until women’s pictures are welcomed as rapturously as Scorsese’s umpteenth mob movie (to be clear, I love a mob movie) or Tarantino’s fafillionth baroque masculinity’s revenge fantasy (which I also quite enjoy), that question is the reason why. You can also buy a Scorsese tribute tee here.
Raygun is a wonderland of highly specific novelty apparel and accessories, all designed & printed by unionized workers in the great state of Iowa. In addition to a full complement of topical Covid-related shirts and masks, they’ve got evergreen designs like the one above. Best of all, if you’ve got a custom design you’re burning to have printed up, they’ll do that for you, too!
This one is maybe the most low-key of them all. Chances are if people see you in this shirt they’ll assume they’re seeing you express your love of Clarks shoes. Fans of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels will see a sly tribute to the shoes Lila Cerullo designs and on which a major plot development hangs at the end of the first book, My Brilliant Friend. There’s also a tote bag available!
Today’s Pop Culture Care Package is brought to you by my favorite Twitter thread of all time, the one about the college student who accidentally was accidentally sky-high on ketamine while trying to unobtrusively serve drinks to the then-President of Ireland.
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