Cameesa - The Blog

There’s some nice artwork on Tank Theory’s site. They’ve established the Tank Theory Artist Society where they invite premier artists and designers to produce work for their t-shirt line. They’ve also added an artists section that showcases the work of artists who’ve created Tank Theory tees. The one thing I do find odd is that they decided to categorize their t-shirts as: “Artist Society T-Shirts” and “Standard T-Shirts”. After looking at the Artist Society T-Shirts do I really want to see Standard T-Shirts? Anyhow, I think they may want to drop the word Standard. There’s some great artwork on the site. I was thinking of picking up Swordplay as it’s from one of my favorite artists Mike Orduna aka Fatoe.

Newsknitter is a data visualization art project that uses clothing to display large scale data. There are a couple of things I find interesting about the project. The first being the removal of the individual from the design process and second the use of computer technology to create the garments. Information gathered from political news feeds online are aggregated and converted into a unique pattern to be knit into a sweater. It is the aggregate information from multiple individuals that help shape the patterns in the shirts and not a single individual in isolation. Finally, a unique and innovative way to use news in clothing. This should help people forget once and for all that CNN sells t-shirts.

There’s an interesting new community platform and social network for fashion called Fashionspace. Started in the UK by Holly Bellm and Harry Bridgeman it is:

“A place to buy, sell or swap your independently designed, vintage or 2nd hand fashion and network with other designers, creatives and fashion-lovers”.

I think this was a niche just waiting to be filled, a community platform centered around fashion and specifically fashion designers. As VentureBeat reports, the platform launched last October and possesses a community of 22,000 active members and 800,000 monthly unique visits. Holly and Harry built the community by leveraging relationships with an initial group of designers that would provide credible content. Bellm’s hopes Fashionspace will help uncover new fashion design talent as MySpace has done for undiscovered music talent.

The one advantage I see over other community platforms that Fashionspace intelligently built in, is a commerce platform to allow community members to set up their own boutiques. The feature is very relevant for their niche community of independent designers. There are no fees to participate or to set up a shop. Fashionspace generates revenues by taking a 10% cut from sales transacted on their platform.

Out of curiosity I went to see what they had in their T-Shirt section. For the full story visit VentureBeat.

Our supplier of choice for T-Shirts, American Apparel has come out with an interesting clothing line that is in tune with their brand image, or as Tim Yu at Cool Hunting calls it: “70s soft-porn fashion aesthetic”. The clothing line is called California Selects, and is a selection of American Apparel’s vintage clothing finds from around the world. Find out more.

Story via Cool Hunting.

At Cameesa we are always open to innovative ideas especially when it comes to T-shirts. The Swedish T-Post definitely possesses a unique model. It is based on a subscription model that is well known to the magazine world. Instead of a magazine you receive a T-shirt every six weeks based around a news topic. What I like most about T-Post is the idea of tying in narrative to t-shirt artwork. The news item that relates to the design is printed on the inside of the shirt.

I also like the consistent way T-Post presents each new shirt on their site, a couple wearing nothing but the shirt. One thing I dislike about the site the drop-down menu that functions as the main navigation. It’s somewhat cumbersome to use and can definitely be implemented in a different fashion.

I received Kevin Lyons’ new book “Pussy and Papers Poetry Power and Pistols” the other day from Amazon. It is a retrospective containing five hundred of his t-shirt designs. For those who don’t know Kevin Lyons is, he is a notable figure in the T-shirt design community whose freelance clients include Nike Basketball, Adidas, Jordan Brand, Stussy and Beams-T in Japan. A keen typographer, Lyon’s shirts display unique type treatments that convey concepts with impact. The hip-hop influence is clearly present in all of his work. I also find it extremely interesting when Lyons references modern art movements within the context of contemporary hip-hop culture. An example is displayed below for a shirt done for Commonwealth Stacks, a shout out to MC Shan with visual references from the Dutch De Stijl art movement.

The Behance Network is an excellent community for artists and designers. While admiring the work on Behance I came across some intersting t-shirts in the portfolios of Chris Gray, Jeff Finley of GoMedia and Jeff Hamada. I’ve posted some of the shirts below. They are linked to the full portfolios on Behance.

Being part of a startup, we are introduced to new people and new companies every day. I was recently introduced to the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center’s fashion program manager, Stephanie Niedospial. From the beginning, Stephanie was very response, enthusiastic, and eager to learn about Cameesa. She was determined to help us succeed in our entrepreneurial experience. Thanks Stephanie.

Moreover, Stephanie described the Stitches Fashion Program (within the CEC) as “a FREE business resource for fashion entrepreneurs.” The Stitches Fashion Program has been beneficial to Cameesa and is an excellent resource for fashion based start-ups in the Chicago area.

If you’re a fashion entrepreneur in Chicago, make sure to check out http://www.stitchesfashionprogram.com/.

If you enjoy reading about fashion and emerging styles read the Stitches blog at http://www.styleexpose.com/