No, not those rather tacky things that seem to be particularly popular with American newlyweds, the ones that say ‘just married’ and a date (as if strangers could find a way to care, and as if family and friends didn’t already know!) but T-shirts for the invitees and participants.
Wedding favours are a hassle for everyone, and perhaps the simplest way to deal with the issue is to find a sympathetic T-shirt printer and get them to help you organise a printing for everyone. The participants: bridesmaids, ushers, and ring-bearers etc if you have them, can have a personalised top that bears their name and their role in the wedding. If your parents are good sports, give them Mother of the Bride etc T-shirts too, but be sure they’ll appreciate the joke – it can fall flat at the reception if they were expecting something a little more upmarket. The guests can have a generic T-shirt and some popular choices are:
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Friend of Bride/Groom
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Team Bride/Groom
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Wedding Party!
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Wedding Crasher (like the film, but not everybody gets it, so be sure you tell any bar staff etc that the T-shirts come from you, or you may find guests who pull their favours on immediately getting ejected from the establishment!)
And a big hit last year was the happy couple’s initials turned into a monogram, it was seen at Surrey wedding parties as if it was obligatory.
Just Married courtesy of lesruba
May 9th, 2008
It seems that inappropriate clothing is catching people out all over the world at present. In the USA the Papa John’s pizza chain has apologised to the Cleveland Cavaliers after it produced a T-shirt with LeBron James’s number on it, and the word crybaby underneath. The T-shirt commemorates a nasty incident in a recent games between the Cavaliers and the Washington Wizards – after leBron James complained about overly hard fouls during the play off between the two teams. This led to Wizards’ player Brendan Haywood, calling James a ‘crybaby’ and gave rise to the unfortunate promotional T-shirt – it’s going to cost the chain a packet too, as a wider apology they are selling 23 cent pizzas to Clevelend residents – 23 is leBron’s shirt number!
And future Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been given notice of a fight in the making. He plans to appoint Roberto Calderoli to his cabinet, but the far-right MP has cause literal death and riots in the past, as a result of being interviewed on television wearing a T-shirt bearing a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. As a direct result of this appearance the Italian consulate in Libya was set on fire, 11 people were killed and another 69 injured in riots. Now the son of General Ghaddafi has warned that the same thing could happen again if Calderoli is give a cabinet post.
Lebron James in the 23 shirt courtesy of ChrisChappeleur
May 6th, 2008
No, not another post about whether the Pope or George Clooney is more popular, because the answer is becoming increasingly clear: it’s the Pope. As well developing his own line of snazzy T-shirts to celebrate his US tour, he’s featured on a goalie’s front … there’s just one problem, it’s the wrong Pope!
Celtic’s goalkeeper Artur Boruc caused another storm of controversy last week (it’s not his first storm, he attracts them like Wimbledon fortnight does) dividing Scottish football fans into two unequal, and very noisy, groups. As the Pole took the applause of the home faithful at the end of the Hoops’ 3-2 Old Firm victory over their most bitter rivals, Rangers, he removed his player’s shirt to reveal an immediately controversial T-shirt underneath. It showed not Benedict XVI, the current pontiff, but Pope John Paul II and read ‘God bless The Pope’.
Gordon Strachan poured oil on the fire in his after-match comments. The Celtic manager laughed off the incident with the peculiar comment, ‘He’s not a bad lad, to be fair,’ without making clear whether he was referencing the former head of the Catholic Church or the goalie. ‘If it was “God bless Myra Hindley”, I might have a problem,’ he concluded, leaving us all to wonder exactly what goes on in the average footballer’s, or football manager’s, head!
Celtic fans celebrating in their usual style courtesy of dustpuppy
May 2nd, 2008
A team of scientists in Portugal have designed a t-shirt that could save lives. The Vital Jacket, designed by BioDevices, continuously monitors heart rate and ECG waves so that those living with acute heart problems can be constantly updated on their physical condition. And it’s expected to transfer to the fitness market too - especially in upmarket gyms. There are two versions, one that stores all its heart monitoring data on an SD memory card for further analysis on a PC later on, whereas people wearing the HWM200 boasts can keep track of their vital signs in real time via a smartphone or PDA. There’s only one downside – all that complex technology means you can’t put it in the washing machine.
If you’ve had a breast cancer diagnosis, you probably spent some time feeling less than great about your appearance. But now you can be a supermodel on the catwalk at the Breast Cancer Care Scotland fashion show. The Daily Mail in Scotland has partnered the charity to search for two truly super models - one female and one male - to represent the Sunday Mail at the show. They and eighteen others with breast cancer will strut their stuff at this glittering fundraising event. There will be two shows on Thursday, September 25, at Glasgow’s Radisson SAS Hotel. If you want to show how look and feel great, despite your diagnosis, please download an application form from http://events.breastcancercare.org.uk/server/show/nav.75 or call 0141 221 2244. Hurry up though - the deadline is tomorrow!
Gym courtesy of combust
April 29th, 2008
So what, exactly, can you print on a T-shirt? As previously mentioned, Peterborough City Council recently failed to see the funny side of David Pratt’s Los Angeles purchased T-shirt. He was given an £80 penalty notice after wearing a top with the slogan: Don’t piss me off! I am running out of places to hide the bodies. After an official complaint was made to the council, street wardens told Mr Pratt his T-shirt could cause offence or incite violence. He faces an on-the-spot fine from the police if he wears it again. And it all came as a huge shock to Mrs Pratt who purchased the souvenir T-shirt for her husband during an American holiday.
The problem arises because what you can and can’t print on a T-shirt is not set in law – instead it’s a question of interpretation. What one person might find funny, another could find insulting and using offensive, abusive, or insulting language is a criminal offence under the Public Order Act. What a lot of people don’t realise is that the same rule applies to printed words as spoken ones - so although Mrs Pratt doesn’t consider the offending word to be a swear word, other people might well do so.
And it’s not even necessary for someone to make an official complaint for the police to act, they just have to think a T-shirt might offend a hypothetical third party. As an example one shopkeeper was threatened with arrest for displaying a toddler’s T-shirt in his shop window that had the slogan: Winner of the egg and sperm race. Police said they had received a complaint that the garment was offensive and would have to be removed from the window of a clothes shop in Brighton.
Probably the most high-profile row over offensive slogans is the French Connection advertising campaign which used FCUK. In 2003, a shop keeper was asked by police to remove an “offensive” T-shirt from a window display. It showed a drawing of a naked woman straddling her male lover, with the slogan ‘the Joy of fcuk’ underneath. However, it’s not clear whether the image or the wording, or both, were judged to be “offensive”. The slogan certainly riled the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which upheld 26 complaints about the logo. However, the slogan alone (without accompanying image) was eventually allowed in adverts – but only after being registered as a trademark.
FCUK courtesy of Paulo Fernando Dias de OLiveira
April 24th, 2008
A T-shirt which features a picture of Princess Diana along with the text She’s Dead, so get over it has gone on sale. The Australian manufacturers, Goatboy, have courted controversy not just with the shirt but with spoof adverts showing images of the Queen and Prince Phillip wearing the £25 shirts – yes, £25! Goatboy say the T-shirts are an ironic comment on the Diana industry which continues a decade after her death. ‘We’ve had Diana china memorial plates, tacky … figurines, and the endlessly touring exhibitions of her musty old frocks Now after six months of the shamelessly lurid inquest - isn’t it time we all got over it?’ said a spokesman for the company. Perhaps recognising the level of criticism they are likely to attract, they have also released a YouTube video in which a young man wearing one of the shirts is attacked by a pensioner who hits him with her walking stick and kicks him in the stomach.
Remember Damart? That most comfortable of central heating garments for the middle-aged bod? Well, it’s moved into T-shirt production! The limited edition T-shirt has been created to raise money for Heart Research UK. The shirt bears a diamante heart and all profits will go to the charity to help research in to heart disease - Susan McFadden, star of West End musical Grease, is the campaign model. Damart said, ‘We are delighted to be working in partnership with Heart Research UK. The majority of our customers are women and they do not seem to realise how at risk they are from heart disease. With this campaign we hope not only to raise money for research, but also to increase awareness about the disease.’
Diana plate courtesy of misocrazy
April 21st, 2008
H&M is to launch a new brand in the UK, not only that, it’s set to open the first flagship store next week! The fashion retailer is set to unveil its first Divided by H&M store in London’s Camden district. Divided, which H&M already operates in Sweden, is a teenage fashion range – this is a growing market across Europe and competing for the teen pound is key to success in the current shaky High Street retailing atmosphere. The store, which will open at 213-219 Camden High Street in north London, will include scaffolding rails, colourful display blocks and oversized speakers to attract younger customers.
Talking about oversized speakers, those whacky guys at Think Geek, online retailers of nerdwear and gimmicks, have a bit of a track record in setting up April Fool’s day jokes which become business bright ideas. In 2007 they presented the ‘8-bit Tie’ – only one of which was originally made, as a joke product to be promoted in their website, but the product was in such demand from readers that Think Geek put it into production. This year, the joke was to be found on April 1st in the presentation of the Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt, a T-shirt with an embedded speaker over the chest area, which would play sound effects to brighten up the average nerd’s dull, dull life. And once again Think Geeks readership has petitioned for joke to be made reality. Now the company has put out a press release: The Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt was originally an April Fool’s Prank… but due to overwhelming positive response and hundreds of e-mails screaming to “make the damn shirt already” we’re putting this item in to production ASAP.
H&M courtesy of Gene Hunt Mikey
