Tilteed - Wearable Art Tees

Expansion II

Tee Artist: a.mar.illo

We got an interview with the artist himself:

Tell us a little more about this t-shirt design.

Expansion is about the birth of a new world, kind of a big bang, or, looking at the faces of the fragment dudes, maybe I´m wrong and it´s destruction:)

You’re a veteran of the t-shirt design contest circuit. Give us an idea of how many t-shirts you’ve had printed through different contest sites. Where was your first win?

Counting all the tees for contest sites including the ones that feature a shirt a day but not the commission works: around 45. The first t-shirt design contest I ever won was for a canadian denim brand called Dish Jeans based in Vancouver.

Nacho Sushi

Tee Artist: Chris Risse

The Family Tree

Tee Artist: craig watkins

A Brief History of the Tee

Posted by Sami on September 22 2011

A T-shirt, as you can see on the Tilteed home page, is a garment worn by women and men; an expression of style, mood and art. Today... that is. But the American tee wasn’t born today, or yesterday for that matter, and regardless of what your tees mean to you now, it's historically rooted in the military.

The T-shirt evolved into American culture, say historians, after the U.S. Navy saw British Royal Navy men wearing the lightweight garb under their uniforms. According to a CBS news article about T-shirt history, the Navy “borrowed” the idea of the tee from the British, and began wearing these white, cotton T-shaped designs in about 1913. According to an army historian interviewed in the piece, the army “unequivocally” borrowed the T-shirt from the Navy--creating what was then called a “quarter-sleeve undershirt” for U.S. servicemen. G.I. Joes often came home wearing their army attire, and unknowingly began a brand-new trend.

When 50s-era stars such as James Dean and Marlon Brando showed up on the silver screen cast in white T-shirts, the trend was solidified as a fashion statement.

A decade later, T-shirts began being utilized for different purposes. First, they were tie-dyed. And when screen printing became popular, tees of all shapes and sizes were printed with statements advocating for social change. Moving into the 70s, Rock ‘n Roll seized the opportunity of the tee; bands began printing iconic logos on T-shirts--and fans began buying (and wearing them). The classic tongue and lips Rolling Stones tee is still printed and sold today.

T-shirts. Everyone wears them but almost no one talks about them. Search Google for 'T-shirt Haikus' and you'll find link after link for shirts with haikus on them, but try finding a haiku about a T-shirt and you're just plain out of luck. Because T-shirts are so ubiquitous, it only seems fitting that we appreciate them by bringing them up for commentary. And so, today we present you with some odd, amusing and surprising facts about what we love most: T-shirts.

- According to this site, 62 percent of Americans state they own more than 10 tees, meaning that if a person laid all of these T-shirts out, they'd circle the globe with tees about 34 times.

- On May 22, 2010, Krunoslav Budiselić from Croatia set The Guinness World Record for 'Most T-shirts Worn at a Time' by putting on 245 tees.

- One T-shirt company studied the life cycle of its T-shirts and determined that the C02 emissions from one non-organic cotton tee is about 8.8. pounds.

- The store Forever 21 recently began selling women's T-shirts that read "Allergic to Algebra" across the front. Due to consumer backlash and harsh criticism from the media, what The Washington Post refers to as the "cheap clothing purveyor," Forever 21, has since pulled the tee from its inventory.

- According to the T-shirt Buyer's Guide, 'T-shirt' didn't actually become a word until it was entered in the English dictionary the 1920s.

- Also according to the T-shirt Buyer's Guide, until the 1950s, tees were considered to be underwear only. That is, "until John Wayne, Marlon Brando, and James Dean shocked Americans by wearing their “underwear” on T.V." in the mid '50s.

- Islamic Scholars state T-shirts with images of famous actors or athletes should not be worn during prayer time, according to an article published yesterday. From Al Arabiya News: "The issue was raised after it was noticed that a sizable portion of youths in Egypt go to the mosque wearing T-shirts with pictures of celebrities, the most common of whom are footballers Lionel Messi Mohamed Abu Trieka and Madonna."

S.T.E.L.L.A.R!

Tee Artist: spacesick

Derick Melander at Friends Academy from Derick Melander on Vimeo.

In today's day and age, T-shirts are about as common as water or wine, though they're not consumed as rapidly--thank goodness. Contrastingly, T-shirts are often worn and re-worn over a period of many years. But what happens to a tee once it's been worn thin or once its 'cool-ness' has become outdated?

Some T-shirts, sadly, end up in landfills. In fact, according to Patagonia, which offers an apparel recycling program called Common Threads, "The population of the United States discards 11.9 million tons of clothing, shoes and textiles per year." Scary as that sounds, it may be comforting to know that some people donate old tees to second hand clothing stores, which keeps them out of the fill. Still yet, there's another--albeit less common and far less expected--place for T-shirts to end up--in works of art.

This route may not be the one most used tees take, considering that there seems to be just one artist in the U.S. making sculptures out of used apparel. Regardless, it's one of the coolest places for an old T-shirt to go. New York artist Derick Melander specializes in creating sculptures out of second hand T-shirts and apparel. As you'll see in the video above, one of his most public works was a sculpted design created in the library of a school with the help of its students. Together, he and the students meticulously folded, color-coded and stacked the items to create a vibrant sculpture that marked the entryway of the library. In this case, the students themselves also donated the clothing that was placed into the piece of art. As a result, Melander says this about the finished piece: "It's essentially a portrait of them or a representation of them, which is really one of the core things I'm trying to get across with these pieces, that the garments all carry a trace of the people who wore them... "

Super Featherwiehgt Champion

Tee Artist: zerobriant

....In the print shop. Happy Friday everyone!

Cat lovin'

Tee artist: tobefonseca

Get this tee for 24 hours at Tilteed.com

Bacon bacon bacon! Who doesn't love bacon?

Tee artist: theinfinityloop

Buy it for 24 hours!

Expansion II

Tee Artist: a.mar.illo

The Very Greedy Caterpillar II

Tee Artist: craig watkins

Another Dramatic Moon Scene

Tee Artist: isaboa

The Eternal Struggle

Tee Artist: craig watkins

Pinkerton

Tee Artist: cmdixon2

Vinyl Frontier

Tee Artist: againstbound