Tag: TShirt

Health

This Eczema-Friendly T-shirt Dress Is a Game Changer—Here’s Why

Post author By news22
Post date June 19, 2019
No Comments on This Eczema-Friendly T-shirt Dress Is a Game Changer—Here’s Why

About five years ago I was forced to reconsider what “comfy clothing” meant. Up until then it had been a rotation of stretchy sweatpants, flannel PJs, and joggers with generous waistlines. But couch-creature attire lost its blissful simplicity, as fears of itchiness and chafing started looming over every fashion choice, from workwear to even those innocent lived-in sweats. That’s what adult-onset eczema will do to you.

Since I was diagnosed, clothing has become a fraught ordeal. Getting dressed—something that was fun and creative on the best mornings—was now daunting. I have to think critically about everything I’m thinking of wearing and determine its irritation potential. I must use fragrance-free detergent exclusively, and carefully avoid dryer sheets, fabric softener, and any other scented products. (This was logistically difficult, since I live in a laundryless walk-up apartment, and also emotionally draining, as I’d be forced to confront my skin flake-caked, bloodied, ointment- and lotion-stained clothes more frequently.)

Before I even put anything on, I have to slather on myriad lotions and prescription ointments, and cover up bloody wounds with first aid gauze, paper towels, and tissues—just to prepare my skin for clothing. To then have to stand there, practically naked, resisting the urge to aggressively scratch my skin, contemplating the risk/reward of various outfit options? It was utterly awful.

My eczema has significantly improved since then, thanks to a litany of medications, including clinical trials. But I’m not 100% eczema-free 24/7. I’ll always need to be cautious about clothes—what they’re made of, what they’re washed in, how they fit—to help curb flare-ups and manage existing ones. And summers will always be especially tough: Humidity does uncomfortable, rashy things to my skin and makes it even more sensitive to clothing. I’ll have more dramatic reactions to fabric, seams, and snugness in hot, sticky weather. So when I learned about a new brand making basics, from tanks to leggings, expressly for people with eczema and sensitive skin, you can imagine my relief.

Saint Haven launched in fall 2018 with a collection of staple pieces made from a buttery proprietary fabric that’s cut and sewn in the smoothest, least itchy way fathomable. It came out of founder Jacqueline Sacks’s own frustrations with apparel options for her kids: “As a mother of three, I set out to find a fabric that would ease my one daughter’s discomfort from eczema and my other daughter’s sensory processing issues that make tags and coarse fabrics problematic,” she says. That involved nearly two years of research and development, 19 prototypes, and a partnership with an ethical manufacturer in Portugal on a material called Saint Haven Soft. It’s made from pulp of beech trees, which are naturally moisture-wicking, spun into an ultra-fine textile that’s dipped in a nontoxic enzyme and colored with nontoxic, environmentally friendly dyes. The result is eco-friendly, hypoallergenic, antimicrobial, and, yes, quite soft.

Of all of Saint Haven’s basics, it’s this simple dress that has changed the way I get dressed.

Saint Haven Women’s Softest T-shirt Dress

Saint Haven

$88

Buy Now

Dubbed the Softest T-shirt Dress, it’s versatile and breathable, almost like a better-than-naked nightgown. I got mine two and a half months ago, and I’ve been wearing it multiple times a week—with a high-waist skirt (instead of a wedgie-inducing bodysuit or a shirt that constantly rides up), tucked into pants, underneath an otherwise itchy sweater or jacket. It’s also a genius travel piece that scrunches down to the size of a pair of socks.

Saint Haven Women’s Softest T-shirt Dress

Saint Haven

$88

Buy Now

The design came from crowdsourcing during the R&D for Saint Haven’s launch. “We spoke to our family and friends and found that everyone experiences comfort in different ways,” Sacks says. “Some women enjoy more snug-fitting leggings, while others prefer a more relaxed pant to lounge in, but we unanimously heard that the Perfect Fit Tee struck just the right balance, with both its fit and the drape of the fabric. Thus the Softest T-shirt Dress was born.”

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Tags ChangerHeres, Dress, EczemaFriendly, Game, TShirt

Health

Expressing Yourself on a T-Shirt Isn't New—But It Feels More Urgent Than Ever

Post author By news22
Post date December 11, 2018
No Comments on Expressing Yourself on a T-Shirt Isn't New—But It Feels More Urgent Than Ever

When I moved across the country last year, cycling through the same outfits for months before my boxes arrived, I turned to L.A.’s wealth of very good vintage stores to replenish my wardrobe. I began to collect vintage T-shirts, always finding the right messaging for whatever mood I was in at the time, like pulling oracle cards—or maybe, like tarot, they read me: I was “Raisin’ Hell” and “Captain Chemical” and “Keyed Up,” and I wanted anyone who saw me to know it. Thus began my love of slogan tees.

I grew my collection with shirts with styles not just from brick and mortar shops, but also from Etsy, eBay, and even Instagram. I began to notice fast-fashion clothing racks and e-commerce sites peddling contemporary takes on them. Except, they seemed to echo the cringe-y messaging of the Limited Too tops I remembered from my youth, only with slightly more grown-up slogans that scream a message of aww shucks faux-girlishness (and more grown-up vices.) “Tequila Is My Co-Pilot.” Oh dear. “World’s Okayest Runner.” Huh? “I Love Everyone Tous Les Jours.” Honey, you don’t have to!

But through all that noise, a few designers emerged as leading the “slogan tee trend” in a much more pointed, political direction—like Monogram Studio and Rachel Antonoff, which are direct but not diminishing, coy but not doormat-ish with their expressive graphics. Often, they’re a little pissed off. They feel more authentic, more personable. Like something you, a real human woman, might actually be thinking, or feeling, or texting your friends.

PHOTO: Amanda Edwards

Actress Elizabeth Banks wearing a T-shirt by Monogram at the 2018 Women’s March in Los Angeles.

PHOTO: Courtesy of Monogram.

Monogram’s “This Is a T-Shirt About Women” shirt, from a collaboration with Madewell.

“Especially right now, with so much that’s going on nationally, internationally, I think people want to have a vehicle that expresses how they feel,” says Lisa Mayock, co-founder of Monogram Studio, which sells vintage-inspired expressive tees for men and women.

“Our ‘BULLSHIT‘ tee shirt is one of our most popular shirts ever, and I think it’s because everyone can relate. They wear it to the office, in a meeting, and feel very subversive, using their voice without actually having to say it out loud.” Like how Janelle Monáe, as part of an interview with Rolling Stone in which she came out as pansexual, was photographed wearing a Monogram muscle tee that reads: “THE RUMORS ARE TRUE.” “She was using the shirt to broadcast the message in a very literal way. That’s exactly our intention with some of the messaging,” Mayock adds.

One Monogram hit that’s sold out four times is its “RESIST, PERSIST, INSIST” tee, which was originally made in collaboration with Design for Progress for a post-election fundraiser, to benefit organizations including Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, The Southern Poverty Law Center, among others. After the event, seeing the mass appeal of the message, Mayock decided to continue producing the shirt as part of her regular collection. It now comes in two colors, and 20 percent of the proceeds of each sale go to Planned Parenthood. Monogram also has an anti-gun tee shirt that features the phrase “DISMANTLE THE NRA” written out six times, each iteration a little more broken and illegible; 20% of the sales from that go to Everytown.

“It’s something that feels important right now,” says Mayock. “Tee shirts are such a time capsule.”

Antonoff had been making “Reproductive” tees for a while before she really started to see them blown up. “When we started doing [them], it was a different time—the world hadn’t gone full Handmaid’s Tale yet,” she says. “The female reproductive system has always been politicized, but it wasn’t fully like it is now.”

After the 2016 election, Antonoff’s designs took on a new meaning, as did most of everything. “It culminated in a lot of our tee shirts that weren’t meant to be political becoming politicized all at once,” she remembers, like a T-shirt riffing on the old classic I’m With Stupid, except reading “I’m With Her,” that predated Hillary Clinton’s campaign. (Her “Equal Pay Now” graphic, unfortunately, is evergreen.) Her Reproductive collection started as a more apolitical inside joke—think of it as wearing your heart, or your uterus, on your sleeve—but has become one of her top sellers. She donates part of the proceeds from each sale to Planned Parenthood, and estimates she’s raised nearly $10,000 for the organization to date.

PHOTO: Rachel Antonoff/Edith Young

A T-shirt from Rachel Antonoff’s Reproductive collection.

It is worth noting that this new wave of single-issue slogan tees pre-dates the major cultural shifts and conversations of the past few years, as fashion tends to do. Months before the #metoo movement went viral last fall, the actress Sarah Ramos collaborated with Antonoff on a new slogan, “Pretty But Doesn’t Know It.” The phrase, and others like it, is something she encounters often in descriptions of female film and television characters. “She’s gorgeous, but she suffers from low self-esteem—that’s not a personality,” says Ramos. And it’s not just on-screen; in Hollywood, “You need to be pretty, but no one can know you put effort into it.” Ramos notes that she was surprised by how vulnerable she felt wearing the shirt, her version of Amy Schumer’s One Direction parody, out in public, giving voice to a harmful rule she says she’d been taught since childhood. “[The T-shirt] is a conversation starter,” she adds.

These shirts and their messaging allow us to reclaim certain words and phrases, to share directly about hard-to-articulate and uncomfortable topics or ideas without being interrupted or cut off. They are subversive. They are a modern manifestation of wearing one’s heart on sleeve, or…er, her chest. “’Hysterical Female‘ was the first time that we decided to reclaim a narrative about us that’s annoying,” says Antonoff of another best-seller. It acts as a snarky cousin to Meena Harris’s “Phenomenal Woman” tee, which has raised over $100,000 for seven different charities.

“Even the small act of buying a tee, I believe, is an act of resistance,” says Harris, who left her job at Slack to run the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign full time.

“I’m really angry, a lot of the time, and I like the idea of putting it out there in a non-cutesy way,” says Antonoff. “I like the idea of being able to sit on the subway in silence, but I’m still saying something.”

If logo-less normcore flourished under the Obama administration, let President Trump’s time in office, with the personal becoming increasingly politicized, be the new era of the slogan tee. And let them be heard. A now threadbare Marc by Marc Jacobs style I’ve had since George W. Bush’s second term—”WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?“—could use a rest, anyway.

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Tags Expressing, Feels, Isn039t, NewBut, TShirt, Urgent

Health

Your Favorite Hanes T-Shirt Just Got Upgraded, Thanks to Nordstrom

Post author By news22
Post date August 18, 2017
No Comments on Your Favorite Hanes T-Shirt Just Got Upgraded, Thanks to Nordstrom

Pop-In@Nordstrom x Hanes NYC Parks and Recreation T-shirt

Pop-In@Nordstrom x Hanes Kidrobot T-shirt

Nordstrom

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Tags Favorite, Hanes, Nordstrom, TShirt, Upgraded