So what is 058637?
I kept making shirts I wished already existed. Not Jewish merch. Not nostalgia souvenirs. Not a logo slapped on a blank. Shirts with enough history, humor, weirdness and New York in them that the right person looks twice.
The stuff I cannot stop saving.
Old Jewish New York. Family photos. Delis. Rabbis. Newspaper ads. Menus. Matchbooks. Hand-painted signs. Catskills leftovers. Punk flyers. Bad printing. Good faces. Things that were not trying to become references when they were made.
Would I actually wear it?
That is pretty much the filter. The reference can be obscure. The joke can be quiet. The shirt still has to work when nobody around you knows the backstory.
The city keeps getting into everything.
Not the postcard version. The version with paper in the window, a guy arguing at the counter, a flyer taped over another flyer, a storefront that will be gone next year.
Because it has to leave the archive.
I like finding something old, strange or half-forgotten and making it useful again. Not preserved behind glass. Worn to dinner, to shul, to a show, on the subway, wherever it ends up.
The shirt gets a life I cannot design.
It gets washed, faded, borrowed, stained, photographed badly, worn somewhere I have never been. That is better than keeping the reference perfect in a folder.
The number stays unexplained.
Ask me in person.
The door is open.
Old photos, weird family ephemera, a restaurant menu, a person I should know about, a shirt idea, a complaint. [email protected]. If it is good, I want to see it.
I do not know exactly what this turns into yet. That is part of the point.
THE SHIRTS