10.6 · 2008-05-10 23:02

One question I get asked a lot, by people who know me, is, “just how many tshirts do you have?”. I’ve never known the answer, until today, when I did a bit of a reorganisation of my wardrobes. I’d assumed the answer was somewhere between two and five hundred…

To make it easier to calculate, I devised the Heathcote – a unit of measure for bulk quantities of tshirts. One Heathcote = 30 tshirts, which roughly =s an Ikea tarp bag, or a large domestic black rubbish sack. It also sounds less daunting – my first quick calculation was 10.6 Heathcotes, which makes me sound less crazy than owning 318 tshirts.

Actually I realised that I’d missed one pile, thus the calculation was:
176 dirty
67 on hangers
20 clean hangers
6 new graniph
49 clean, folded
8 white dirty
= 326

I’ve just remembered there’s a whole pile of plain tshirts in another drawer, so this number will go up. Up to 11, at least, if not 12.

The rules are quite simple: tshirts are counted, including long sleeve, but excluding jumpers, fleeces, undergarments and anything that has a technical use (e.g. base layers, running kit).

If I was an artist, I would buy up to 365, then wear each one once for a day, then burn them all. But I’m not, and I won’t – unless I can get a grant for it. If any gallery wants to exhibit them all, that’s a different matter.

There were no surprises, just lots of memories – I can tell you the story of every tshirt, and I love them all, even if some are impossible or inappropriate to still wear. Most are Mediums, except a few Smalls from when I was smaller, and a lot younger, a few Large, weirdly all from Copenhagen, where the tshirts are stretchier and the people must be a hell of a lot thinner (I have no problems with mediums from Japan), and a very few Xlarges, from even before the Smalls, when I didn’t know any better about clothes fitting.

It’s hard to pick favourites – but this one is probably the top of the pile:

It was bought on my first trip to New York, 10 years ago, at the Pop Shop. It’s robots, it’s pink, and in the mind of humans they’re doing something vaguely rude. Unfortunately, this is a Small, as are the other shirts I bought on the same trip (a lovely pixellated donkey kong one by XLarge, and a burning house reprint by David Wojnarowicz, bought at the New Museum, who were showing a retrospective).

These days, it’s a lot easier to buy tshirts from the comfort of your own computer. I miss the thrill of the chase, and the exclusivity buying a tshirt in New York, or Tokyo, gives. These are my top places to buy from:
Threadless – a mixed bag of designs, a few too many large prints, and hardly exclusive any more – I was in a Helsinki supermarket and someone else was wearing exactly the same tshirt. That said, at last count I own 56 Threadless tees, so they’re doing something right.
graniph – my favourite designers have opened an international web shop. Great if you like tightly kerned German Helvetica. Be careful though, some of the tees are rather rude (I throw the text into Google Translate before wearing).
beams t – another great Tokyo tee shop, but rather more expensive. Luckily, it’s easier and cheaper to get 2K tees from other places now, but they do some nice exclusives. (they seem to have closed down their international web store, weirdly)

Also-rans include oddica and la fraise – unfortunately I just don’t get on with their designs and styles. Both technically print great teeshirts though.

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