The longevity of t-shirts never ceases to amaze us. Our company started out as a small screenprinting shop back in 1989. Today we still print almost $2 million worth of t-shirts every year and we know a little about screenprinting. In the beginning we had a four color manual press and bought white t-shirts for about $2.50 and sold them imprinted for about $4-$6. Though the costs of shirts have varied over the years they are generally down considerably today. You do the math. Someone is making a lot of money selling $85 T-shirts.
Original article can be found here.
Starbucks is celebrating their 40th birthday, and to commemorate they’ve asked Alexander Wang, Sophie Theallet, and Billy Reid, the recipients of the past three annual CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund awards, to design limited edition t-shirts for the brand. The tees are currently available at StarbucksStore.com and select Nordstrom locations for a very pricey $85. Do they not realize it’s a recession? We can’t even spend $85 on our close friends for their birthdays, so why would we give it to Starbucks for theirs?
All of the tees incorporate the company logos and Alexander Wang decided to do so with a coffee stain design that bleeds into the Starbucks Siren. Funny? Slightly. But we think the joke is on you if you spend $85 to wear a designer coffee stain that promotes Starbucks.
The other thing that makes us sad is that Starbucks tries to act like they did some great thing by selecting Vogue Fashion Fund award winners to make these t-shirts. The Vogue Fashion Fund gives annual grants to support emerging designers. But Alexander Wang is now a well established, successful designer and NONE of the proceeds of these expensive t-shirts go to anything other than Starbucks.
Well, Happy birthday, Starbucks, but consider our skim latte your birthday gift. Maybe we’ll even spill it on ourselves for free.
