2007 saw Worn Free shirts spreading far and wide, from HBO series to tiny clubs, from Singapore fan mags to German lad mags. So it's only fitting that we close out the year with a shout-out from Men's Vogue, which profiles WF's founder and says nice things about our cottony wares. You can read about it here.
We're not just shoveling hype when we say that in 2008 you'll be seeing our new designs everywhere you go. To cite but a few examples:
So keep your eyes peeled. And have a deliriously enjoyable but safe New Year's.
As the New Year approaches, we celebrate dreams -- in this case, the dream of South African-born singer-songwriter Karma, who relocated to the States to follow her musical bliss.
Now based in Miami, this gifted chanteuse has been charming an ever-widening circle of listeners at clubs from coast to coast. Her album The Riddle is winning admirers and she's sampled on a track by hip-hop hitmaker Lil Wayne. She also happens to be a devotee of snug-fitting, aesthetically insouciant couture like our Joey Ramone London shirt.
Though Karma's finely wrought pop-rock is a million miles from the candied-caveman stomps of the Ramones, the story conjured by this shirt is perhaps more relevant than one might think. After all, The Ramones brought their joyous three-chord mayhem to the U.K. in 1976 and started a revolution, essentially giving birth to the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Pretenders and other first-wave British punk and new-wave bands.
Karma, too, has traveled a long way to sow the seeds of her muse. Who knows what future music she's already inspired?
So Happy New Year, and may 2008 mark the fulfillment of all your dreams.
According to its publisher's Web site, 8 Days is "Singapore's best-selling English entertainment and lifestyle title." This teen-oriented mag has been around for about 17 years, and if you want the inside skinny about Michelle Chia, Fiona Xie or Sharon Au, you'd be a fool to look anywhere else.
Needless to say, we're delighted to appear in such pulchritudinous company. 8 Days was kind enough to include Worn Free's John Lennon "Boy Howdy" shirt, with its exuberant R. Crumb graphic, in its "shopping" section, noting, "It's rock history, man."
Does this mean we're that much closer to seeing WF shirts on the glittery torsos of Asian action stars? Will a martial-arts vixen deliver a death-kick while sporting one of our Joan Jett tees? Will we see Fann Wong leaping across rooftops clad in our I'm Not Johnny Ramone shirt?
Our hearts race at the thought.
The couture options for small children have improved substantially of late, don't you agree?
Used to be you couldn't find anything stylish or cool to pull over your little angel's head - just an insufferable array of cute animals.
That's all changing, of course. And we like to think we're making a contribution with a kid-sized selection of WF designs like our John Lennon Come Together and You Are Here tees, our fearsome Johnny Thunders Skull & Bones shirt (perfect for the terrible twos), our savage Steve Marriot Wild Thing tee and our unimpeachably keen Joan Jett Peaches shirt.
We're told that there's this holiday coming up involving presents, and the gift of Worn Free never fails to impress. We're just sayin'.
You may recall reading about the insanely cool new Iggy Pop "I Wiped Out the 60's" tee on this very blog, where we noted that this was merely one of three Iggy-inspired shirts being rolled out by your nice friends at Worn Free.
Feast your eyes on another: the Rainbow shirt, which the Ig-Man wore famously in a 1977 shot taken in Berlin. It was a heady time; Iggy was reaching his creative peak and exploring the druggy dark side with sometime mentor David Bowie, who'd himself embarked on a brilliant trio of art-rock recordings with producer/collaborator Brian Eno. Iggy, meanwhile, had transformed himself from proto-punk hellraiser to a songwriter and singer of ever-deepening maturity.
Did you know that the man born James Newell Osterberg turned 60 this year? Let the AARP be warned.
The Rainbow in question, according to what little information we've been able to dig up, was a North London club that closed its doors in 1982. One can only imagine what debauchery took place there.
Of course, you can slip on one of these babies and start cutting your own art-damaged swath through your local fulminating metropolitan center. Perhaps this classic clip of Iggy and The Stooges turning in an incendiary "I Wanna Be Your Dog" in 1979 will inspire you.
You may recognize rapper Common, seen here introducing legendary MC Rakim at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors; since we think dude is among the sharpest, most forward-looking artists out there, we're delighted to see him wearing our John Van Hamersveld Indian shirt, which works perfectly with whatever you're wearing -- baggy or tight, tucked or untucked.
Just because we make the best rock 'n' roll T-shirts in the world doesn't mean we're just for rock 'n' rollers.
Some things we didn't know about Scottish pop superstars Wet Wet Wet and frontman Marti Pellow (pictured here in WF's wildly popular Frank Zappa Radio Clyde tee):
1. The band formed at Clydebank High School in Clydebank, Scotland. It is reasonable to think that they listened to Radio Clyde.
2. WWW took its name from a line in a Scritti Politti song.
3. Marti brought in Memphis R&B producer Willie Mitchell, best known for helming classic LPs by Al Green, for his 2006 solo album, Moonlight Over Memphis.
4. The singer's real name is Mark McLachlan.
5. This photo comes to us courtesy of bigpicturesphoto.com, "the world's biggest & best celebrity picture agency," and anyone who says otherwise is looking for a fat lip, yo.
Bonus fun fact: Scritti Politti's name comes from the work of Italian Marxist political theoretician Antonio Gramsci. Really.
Strumming a guitar and warbling lyrics from your diary while in the vicinity of freshly brewed espresso simply isn't enough. A real troubadour can jump onto any stage and engage an audience on every level.
Which brings us to Matt Nathanson.
This San Francisco-based artist is a terrific songwriter, crafting solidly melodic tunes full of pathos and wit. He's got a voice of real power and a huge emotional range.
And often, prior to reducing an crowd to tears with a heartbreaking ballad, he'll unspool a rambling, hilarious monologue or bust out a riotous cover version of "Jessie's Girl."
In a nutshell: They laugh, they cry, and they can't wait to see him again.
And yes, we're biased, but we also admire Matt's taste in shirts. In this shot (taken Chapman Baehler), he sports our Frank Zappa Radio Clyde tee.
And in this video clip, which gives a fine indication of dude's onstage mastery, he wears WF's John Lennon "This Is Not Here" shirt.
Meet Allan Tannenbaum. He's one of the great photojournalists of our time, and his shots of John Lennon and Yoko Ono are legendary -- so much so that they've fueled a voluminous show at Washington, D.C.'s Govinda Gallery and figure largely in his upcoming book, SoHo Blues.
The Passaic, N.J., native made films, taught photography and filmmaking and, in the '70s, began working for the SoHo Weekly News, for which he shot the Lennon-Ono portraits. Among these is a shot of John in the original Record Plant Studios shirt; as you can see, Allan is pictured in two Worn Free editions originally made famous by Lennon, Home and You Are Here.
During the '70s and early '80s he also produced iconic shots of everyone from Bob Marley to Jack Nicholson (not to mention porn stars, poets, athletes, Studio 54 revelers and even a pic of Woody Allen with Betty Ford). After the demise of SoHo Weekly News in 1982, Allan embarked on a series of adventures abroad, documenting turmoil and change in South Africa, Korea, the Middle East, Africa, The Philippines and South America, among other places. He's living an extraordinary life, and we're grateful to him for documenting it so vividly. But we have a feeling he's just getting started.
That's Diva Zappa, knitting in the sunshine while attired in our appropriately verdant Frank Zappa "Rental" shirt.
Diva's knitted items -- including hats, scarves and ponchos (the cognescenti would be certain to ask if they're Mexican ponchos or Sears ponchos) -- have swiftly become legendary among crafts mavens.
So much so, in fact, that she and her creations are featured separately on the U.K.'s cult TV sensation The Mighty Boosh.
On her "Hand Made Beauty" site you can find out all about these coveted items and also about "knitting activism," notably her support of the Watoto Fund, which does truly wonderful humanitarian work in Africa.
Zappa senior was famously photographed in the Rental shirt in Berkeley, Calif., in 1968, at which time he was doing some of his most audacious work with his band The Mothers of Invention (he'd already skewered the hippie movement and Sgt. Pepper and helped introduce avant-jazz and modern classical motifs to rock). It might be said that there was an element of knitting to FZ's restless sonic pastiches, which stitched together bits of tape, snatches of fanfare, spoken word snippets and musique concrète like multicolored strands of musical yarn. In any case, the Zappa dynasty remains as vibrant and unpredictable as ever.
