Archive for June, 2008
We have been advised by several suppliers that prices are increasing. The products ranges affected are Kustom kit, Regatta and Gildan. We are holding our prices existing prices until 1st July, so if you want to avoid the price rises you can stock up now.
The reasons given for the increases are as follows:
- Increased production costs partly due to escalating oil prices.
- A weakening of Sterling.
- Increased distribution costs.
- Increased cotton prices.
- Appreciation of Chinese currency and rising Chinese labour costs.
June 27th, 2008
In 2005 a young athlete called Jenifer Hoffman was assaulted by a neighbour. It turned out that the man, who was already on probation, was sentenced to two years in jail. But Hoffman knew he would be coming back to live on the same street when he got out, so she persuaded neighbours to write letters suggesting the man serve a community sentence. ‘I knew he’d be angry after being in jail and that he would be coming back to live on our street. I thought it would be better for all of us if we gave him the opportunity to rehabilitate himself,’ Hoffman said. As a result of her action she joined a domestic violence charity and began to change the world, one T-shirt at a time.
In 2006, Emotional Armor was launched with sixty messages on T-shirts. Before long, a local shop was selling over fifty a day and hospital gift shops picked up the line. What do they say? Well ‘Princess, Not in Need of Rescue,’ quickly became a top seller, as did, ‘My Scars Are My Favourite Tattoo,’ ‘Write Your Own Happy Ending,’ and ‘Happiness Is Free.’ There are also baby T-shirts with such messages as: ‘Destined for Greatness’ and ‘Milk and Love’. One of Hoffman’s favourite messages is: ‘Off to Save the Dragon.’ It reminds her of her assailant. ‘If people are treated with love and kindness, they won’t breathe fire,’ she says. Each product comes with a card that explains that the net profits go to violence prevention and children’s empowerment programmes.
June 27th, 2008
Military and heraldic embroidery might seem a long way away from modern clothing, but although its history is ancient, the art is fully up to date. One family of embroiderers (called bullion workers because their embroidery took place with golden thread, actually silk woven with genuine gold bullion) came to England in 1767. They were originally Huguenot refugees from Flanders who’d learned their skills in entourage of Catherine de Medicis, when she married into the French court in the 16th century.
In this period heraldic art was used to show the pomp and power of the wearer - garments trimmed with gold lace and embroidery show the rank and achievements of the person they fitted. The family’s name was Hand. The business continued and thrived, moving into embroidery for wedding dresses and stage costumes too. By 2001, M. Hand, merged with the Lock firm of embroiders to form a business that focuses on military, fashion and couture embroidery.
Today you can actually tour the Hand and Lock showrooms and see hand embroidery with genuine gold thread take place in front of you – it’s an astonishing sight. Their embroidery is sent around the world and appears on everything from the dresses worn on stage by Celine Dion to the crests and emblems worn by Princes William and Harry, and other officers, on dress parade.
Although it might sound far removed from daily life, most of us absorb the impressions of crests and emblems every day, although they probably aren’t hand-embroidered from pure gold! Every school blazer carries a crest, every police department has an emblem along with its shield, every soldier bears his rank, and company along with other insignia and the first thing we do when a meter reader knocks on our door is ask to see his or her ID – which will have a crest or emblem on it! Embroidery on workwear is usually machine embroidered now, which makes it a lot cheaper than Hand and Lock’s output (here’s a clue, they still price their products in guineas, never a sign of something cheap) but still gives the same impression of officialdom, history and heritage.
Workwear insignia courtesy of connor365
June 24th, 2008
The link between geeks and T-shirts is well established, whether it’s based in the often esoteric T-shirt slogans and images worn by your average geek, such as ‘You’ve read my t-shirt, that’s enough social interaction for one day, or the truly exclusionist ‘There’s no place like 127.0.0.1’ (127.0.0.1 is ‘home’ in geekspeak). There are geek T-shirts that work for non-geeks though, and often they are a clever combination of technology and style. One of the best of the recent offerings is Music and Sons’s MUSIC-ED T-shirt which is a hand-printed shirt with a pocket that holds any MP3 player and in-built earbuds that can be strung through the shirt’s collar. It has an environmentally friendly version in organic cotton and bamboo too. To use the shirt you simply have to put it on, slip your MP3 player in the pocket and connect it to the pocket plug, connect the supplied earbuds to the plug in the rear of the collar and you’re done! It cuts out all that dangling cabling too …
If that sounds a bit too high-tech, there’s fun to be had with the Gadgets.co.uk T-shirt which has an illuminated whiteboard powered by AAA batteries – so that you (or somebody else if you’re not a geek without friends) can write or draw anything they want on your front.
MP3 courtesy of sves
June 20th, 2008
The former Spice Girl, who is now the ‘face’ or rather the ‘body’ of lingerie manufacturer Ultimo, has admitted to a strange addiction: she adores T-shirts from one particular second-hand shop in her new home town - Los Angeles. She says, ‘There’s a place on Fairfax in Los Angeles that sells vintage, classic rock T-shirts. They cost a fortune, and usually have holes in them, but they are very cool.’ So something you threw away a couple of years ago could now be adorning the body of a star!
British-born Mel was given the nickname Scary Spice by the British media because of her outrageous, attitude, ‘abrasive’ Leeds accent and manner of dress on stage – often in leopard-print-skin-tight outfits. She’s also famous for her courtroom paternity battle with Eddie Murphy, who has since admitted fathering her daughter, Angel.
Mel B courtesy of Tawny Kate-aen
June 17th, 2008
We all like jet black T-shirts, but sometimes they become grey so fast we wonder if we actually carried the wrong one out of the shop and purchased the ‘charcoal’ option by mistake, right? Well, there are things you can do to extend the life of a good black T-shirt, and here’s how:
- Over time, all black dyes will fade from sunlight, even in winter, even if you do nothing else to them. This can’t be prevented, it’s a phototropic reaction, but storing black clothing in cupboards or wardrobes with the doors and drawers closed will make it stay black for longer.
- Fuzzing is the effect of abrasion on your black T-shirt when it is worn and when it’s washed, and it results in the surface of the fabric rising up as the fibres rub against each other and this scatters the light, making your T-shirt appear dull and faded. Always wash black T-shirts inside out so the abrasion will be on the inside of the garment.
- To avoid leaching, which is where the dye in your black T-shirt or other clothing leaves it and goes elsewhere, always wash blacks with blacks put your black fabrics on the gentlest cycle available to avoid both abrasion and dye loss.
- And finally, plain black cotton garments, soaked in white vinegar for an hour before their first wash, will have their dye ‘fixed’ much better than those that don’t! Not a good idea for non-cottons or clothing with transfers though …
June 13th, 2008
Female students in Ukraine stripped off for a publicity inspiring protest against having their hot water cut off. Dozens of girls plunged into a fountain in Kiev’s Independence Square for a wet T-shirt demonstration with a difference. They were all equipped with soap and sponges, and many stripped down to their bikinis or underwear and washed their T-shirts in the running water of the fountain. Unsurprisingly, they attracted a large crowd of onlookers.
An annual cutting off of the hot water supply is common practice in Ukraine and many other post-Soviet states where the authorities usually take a month in the summer to carry out maintenance work on the pipes. The girls said they wanted to attract the authorities’ attention to the poor timing which always happens in the middle of exams.
Kate Moss has put her name to a limited edition T-shirt, all the profits from which will go to the Starlight Children’s Foundation. Starlight has recently celebrated its 21st anniversary and helps children with serious and terminal conditions. Kate said, ‘Starlight offers a lot of hope to a lot of children at a difficult time in their life. I was really happy to help.’
Wet T-shirts by bobbychuck24
