My favourite shirt is almost dead.

February 21, 2021 10:10 AM

Inspired by the sun coming out in London today: My all-time favourite T-shirt is falling to bits and likely won't survive another summer. Can you help me replace it? Images of the shirt front: here, a closeup on the cartoon here, and the creator's signature here.

Source information that might help:

1. I bought it from an anarcho-syndicalist-punk-crusty bookshop/vegetarian pantry/meeting place/something very similar in Stoke Newington or thereabouts in 1990 or so. I am pretty sure they were printing them in-house; my then-boyfriend and I had them in different colours. If you remember this place, that might help too.

2. The design seems to be "anarcho-punk kinda-sorta-Calvin and his teddy bear enjoying a sunny day," with a signature of "Rebel [Heart] '87." Is this based on anything out there in pop culture that I can track down?

3. If there's no replacement available, is there a good way of photographing the design and getting that transferred to a new shirt somehow?

posted by Orkney Vole to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (10 answers total)

Best answer: Wash, starch, iron, and carefully straighten it, to get it as flat and wrinkle-free as possible. Then photograph it. Google's image search might help find the artist. The image part seems in good shape, and you might be able to carefully cut it, and sew it on to another shirt. This will not be perfect, as it will sag. It could be quilted onto another shirt by a crafty person.

I might save the image part, frame it, and look for a new favorite tee, but that was not your question.
posted by theora55 at 11:03 AM on February 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You can wash, starch, iron and scan it onto an iron-on transfer sheet. voila! New shirt.
posted by Ideefixe at 11:07 AM on February 21, 2021 [4 favorites]

Best answer: If you can't find a new one, you could take a high quality photo of the image and have a online t-shirt place print it? (A Friend with a dslr could be useful here).
posted by TheAdamist at 11:21 AM on February 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

Best answer: ^^^ yeah, if you could enlist a graphic designer for a scan/photo and then have them polish the image/extract the linework, an online t shop will let you you build your own from an image.
posted by j_curiouser at 11:29 AM on February 21, 2021

Best answer: In case it helps, the signature looks more like "R[PEACE SIGN]EL [HEART] '87" to me.
posted by cocoagirl at 11:43 AM on February 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: So, assuming the peace symbol in the signature is also the letter O.. Could it be the work of Roel Smit?
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 12:29 PM on February 21, 2021 [10 favorites]

Best answer: It is definitely Roel Smit. Here is an article with pics from a zine from '87. If you scroll down, there's a piece by Roel Smit, and he signs it just like your shirt is signed! Hope this helps.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 12:48 PM on February 21, 2021 [13 favorites]

Response by poster: Metafilter comes through again! Thank you, everyone, especially RobinofFrocksley.

I found Roel on Facebook and sent him a message. I'll get the iron out tomorrow and see whether I can get a reasonably good photo. My t-shirt lives to be worn another day.
posted by Orkney Vole at 2:55 PM on February 21, 2021 [9 favorites]

If you can't find a graphic designer, try running the photo through a site like Vector Magic to convert it to vector format so it'll print at high resolution.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:11 PM on February 21, 2021

I spent a minute cleaning up the image you posted. It'd probably look pretty good on a print-on-demand t-shirt.
posted by gregr at 8:22 AM on February 22, 2021 [2 favorites]