Wearing your heart on you chest

I DO love a good ‘slogan tee’, many a dreary depressing day has been brightened by a gem of a t-shirt passing me on the street.

I saw a brilliant one today, ‘I’m a legend in Japan’ declared the shirt of an inconspicuous looking boy. As soon as I see something like that my mind goes into over drive; I cannot help but imagine the chubby, be-stubbled, baggy jeaned being trudging down the British Library steps as a ‘legend in Japan’. How is he a legend? I suspect perhaps a rock star with a pair of Elton John jazzy glasses…in some high heeled pointy cowboy boots, and spiked up hair. There are hundreds of Japanese clamouring to click their cameras at him, they will try and force their way into the photo and do the peace sign. He is proud but kind. And then he flies back to London and does a spot of studying in the British Library.

Slogan t-shirts used to be terribly political. When Katharine Hamnett made her baggy white sloganed creations in the early 80s the phrases had purpose, ‘CHOOSE LIFE’ the black block letters screamed, and later there were t-shirts with direct references to war (and of course ‘FRANKIE SAY RELAX’ , so commercialised and famous you will find it in Primark). That brave woman has spawned hundreds of cheap manufactures who are mass producing the most ridiculous phrases they can muster.

The best example I have at this is from a hot summers Reading Festival. I was but 16 and it was the year of the slogan. ‘I KILL BADGERS WITH SPOONS’. Really? And Animal cruelty is nothing to shout about! But that skin head loved it! I wonder what possessed him to pick up that t-shirt from what ever hovel he bought it. What went through his mind?

But the best, a fat boy with small round sunglasses ‘WHO’S THE DADDY?’. I wanted to tap his should and confirm he was indeed the daddy. I wish I had.

I DO love a good slogan tee.