Cow ‘Vintage’ T-Shirt Brief

I should start by saying I found the brief itself a complete contradiction. Cow ‘vintage’ store would like some ‘commercial’ t-shirts please… I’m not sure about how other people view vintage clothing but to me the whole point seemed to be that you own something unique that anyone cannot just pick up in a high street store.

I had a look around the shop and was not surprised to discover that most of the clothing was not used or second hand but in fact brand new. The give away was in the back of the t-shirts which all contained the same label. They have gone to the effort to find a supplier that can offer slightly worn looking t-shirts to further add to the aesthetic. The designs on the shirts themselves were very uninspiring mainly consisting of fake American football team logos with ridiculous slogans across the front. For me Cow is not a vintage shop, it is vintage style clothing for the high-street shopper, the person who does not want to put the effort in to look around thrift shops but desires that ‘Alexa Chung’ look straightaway. I think this is production line vintage for the masses. To completely contradict everything I just wrote I do think that this is a really good opportunity to get some work out there in the public domain.

I decided that I would approach this brief firmly tongue in cheek. I wanted to create something aesthetically pleasing that would work on a t-shirt but that would also have a pop at the same consumer market it was aimed at. I started experimenting with a simple montage style taking fashionable vintage photography and deforming the human figures but replacing the heads with heavy machinery, the simple concept that people are becoming unoriginal and effectively becoming machines, simply consuming. I developed the designs by incorporating German text from a production line assembly manual, the use of German and the choice of industrial typeface Din engschrift adding to the aesthetic.