Over the last few years, there has been a drastic change in consumer behavior which is manifested in the emerging fashion lines. When we look at brands and fashion designers looking back, we realize there’s a kind of cult culture connected to consumers. This is your mom who only shops Coach bags and your boyfriend who loves to shop Vetements and HBAs religiously. With Vetements simply being a clothing brand that innovates what is really worn on the streets to the runways making clothes even although they’re expensive and stylish, it’s literally taking fashion consumerism to the next realm. If we continue to succumb to this idealistic consumer-based collective consciousness, we are only allowing fast fashion parasites to reach the places we worry about. Buy clothes that are supposed to be worn for one season and one season only because they’re essentially priced for that season only, and after that also date only. This formula has sadly been proven to work and generate revenue which is all as a result of the hype around the masterpiece which has never happened before, it is nice for business, which keeps cult members coming back for more.
With this in mind, Byronesque, an online vintage editorial based e-commerce platform and private shopping app has released a limited edition collection of t-shirts. A series of meticulous fashion rebels who have transformed but most significantly transcended idealistic views of well-crafted fashion. The design is a rebellious celebration of the subculture’s most revered fashion, Byronesque’s mission to the world is to motivate people to defy the banality and mediocrity of popular culture statistics and selfies. A similarly set “rise above the rest” view in both image and value.
Byronesque specialises in COMME des GARÇONS, Alaïa, Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Maison Martin Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto, early Helmut Lang and other similar designs that offer a more significant alternative to fast fashion and outdated nostalgia. What finally makes Byronesque so great is that while the vintage fashion trade is also a lucrative business, it has never been done at this level.
The designs have been carefully curated by the Byronesque Editors at Cheif, Gill Linton, and the company’s Creative Director Justin Westover, working with pioneering ‘dream team’ t-shirts Living in Perfect Distraction AKA LPD. This brilliant ring comes with a limited edition vintage distressed t-shirt that represents a watershed moment in each designer’s fashion history, the date and character of the aesthetic were chosen by Linton himself, but HURRY the limited edition collection only has a total of 200 shirts, a promising “vintage of the future” archive for your wardrobe. They do not care about sales like supermarkets. It’s too cool for any of that. This is still in some degree of high fashion.
Linton spoke about the shirts and wittily stated, “Every shirt is like wearing a fashion editorial. Everything from the date to the print to even the colour and wear of every T-shirt has been selected by hand to tell a story about the designers who have made important contributions to the fashion industry. What better way to pay homage to our vintage heroes? “
Byronesque has also designed a series of unique prints that capture each designer’s iconic history in greater detail. This design is available for sale entirely at Byronesque.com, temporarily
The main collection is available in stores and online through a list of well-known retail partners including Style.com and Assembly NYC & LA and will retail from $350.00. Each deeply distressed T-shirt has been sourced from one of Byronesque’s vintage specialist partners, Patrick Matamoros of Chapel NYC, and critically acclaimed fashion illustrator Jessica May Underwood has brought the design to life in a series of illustrations.
About sourcing T-shirts for Byronesque, Matamoros says, “Real vintage blank T-shirts of this quality are rare and hard to find, which is why they are in such high demand. At this point in fashion history, they are as special as the designer collections Byronesque celebrates”
The collection includes:
The Antwerp 6 T-shirt reflects the dark and gothic influence of Antwerp itself, with polka dot color for an uncommon combination of Walter Van Beirendonck and Dries Van Noten designs.
The Halston 54 was designed in silver foil to mark Halston’s influence on the Studio 54 era. The fit of every T-shirt was sheer in the same way most Halston women were semi-nude in clubs.
Kawakubo’s most famous early collection from 1982 is full of holes. Titled the collection “Gruyère cheese”, every t-shirt is equally distressed.
With the world’s most famous trademark of fashion, a fetish for draping and pockets, the Yamamoto series is a distinctive pocket T-shirt featuring YY from DD/MM/YY.
Westwood and McLaren pitted their most controversial Tits and Gay Cowboy prints against one another, while Montana, which won a fashion Oscar in ’85 and which was inspired by S&M was printed in textured rubber.
Petri is a special tribute to The Face Magazine and Buffalo stylist Ray Petri, and eventually, Byronesque celebrates the Couple with its famous back-to-front neon graffiti print that debuted in ’83.
In other words, the quality of this T-shirt is not worth the 150 dollar Gildan printed t-shirt you buy from Kanye West’s overcrowded Life Of Pablo Merch. Not to go off topic here but do you understand how much those Gildan shirts cost at wholesale? Let me tell you – around $1.50 – 4.00 UDS. That’s 5.8-8.5x markup… for Gildan. So to come back, at all times remember that it is quality over quantity. Buy less, but choose wisely.
