As you may or may not have noticed, I am a sucker for the IT tee.
It is a piece that can make your wardrobe explode with attitude, personality & (why not?) eccentricity.
I think almost anything can be used and should be acceptable to make a statement t-shirt; from spray paint to stencils to reproductions of artwork, from lace to human hair, from sequins to fake animal horns, you get the point ; you can patchwork a tee, you can tear it, you can shred it, you can print it,you can shrink it, you can paint it, you can bleach it, you can wear it inside out or backwads -- there's no such thing as kitsch in an IT tee, as long as it's message is loud, clear and in perfect balance with the person who wears it.
You must agree with me that the same tee (and to extrapolate, the same piece of clothing, shoe, etc.) can look totally different on unlike persons. My bottom line opinion is that it's not the clothing that makes someone look kitschy, but the other way around. To give a light example, a worn out Vitalij Kuprij tee paired with a neat jacket could look perfect on an older man, whereas the same garment would be disastrous on Britney Spears ( ;)))) ). To give a stronger example , compare how the same pair of trousers can be defined by
Andreea Banica or
Laura Vargalui ( I am aware that this is an over-disputed theme-- see the
Dadamoda post on this and many others, but it emphasizes my point quite accurately :):) ).
Coming back to the it-T and its attributes, you can do pretty much everything with the right one. You can dress down an outfit (as illustrated
here &
here ) or dress it up (depending on the tee) , you can appall or make people smile with it , and so on.
And speaking of appalling, what do you think of the latest Christopher Kane' s tees here bellow-and all the monkey-print items from his collection (yes, I did hear more than a few negative comments on them, which I do not agree with)? I think they are a relevant example that they cannot wear themselves, it's the person that carries out their message ( also, i think the fact that the models in the images are faceless , although non-intended, is a suggestion pointing to the depicted direction - you can add faces and send the images to me, and I'll post them :D) . How do you perceive them?
Now...returning to my original line, since I am such a fan of these tees, I cannot help sharing a few of my current lusts . Apart from the above Lanvin SS'09( Alber Elbaz 's tees are all-time favourites ), House of Holland & the already mentioned C.Kane, I have my eye on some other pieces, such as:
These 2 See'by'Chloe items , the left one from SS'09 and the right one from the current collection.
And also these DSquared (left) and Marc by Marc Jacobs (right) pieces.
But my favourite of favourites is this Lanvin (of course) Bette Davis t-shirt, which is on sale on
LuisaViaRoma for 462 euros ( :(((((( ) and on
Browns is still with the original retail price of 660 euros ....(sigh...) . I am definitely waiting for a bigger sale on this one, as it's a must have for me :).
