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My Massive T-Shirt Collection
Jan. 6th, 2010 08:56 pmThis week, I decided to organize and put into plastic containers with cedar my entire collection of SW tees. I'm a t-shirt hound. I have no idea why I became a t-shirt addict when I was in my early teens except that maybe living in South Florida, where t-shirts and shorts are wearable 90% of the year, had something to do with it. They go with everything. They're so simple, yet they say so much about the person wearing them.
Monday night I counted all of the SW t-shirts I've bought or received just from 1993 to 2002. The last time I counted all of my SW t-shirts was in 1998 and back then I had 26 t-shirts. The grand total of shirts purchased up through today? 107. That doesn't count two SW hoodies, two track jackets, one denim shirt, two polo shirts, one sweatshirt, and a tank top. I bought 13 tees alone in 1997; yes, I can still remember when I bought every shirt!
What I do is I'll wear a shirt for a couple of years, then "retire" it to the collection. Occasionally, I'll break an oldie but goodie out. For example, I found a SW polo shirt I bought from the fan club--back when you had to do it through the mail--in 1998. It's still in excellent condition and doesn't look dated at all. So it's back in rotation.
Going over all of my older shirts, it's kind of funny to see how styles have changed since the 1990s. Most of the shirts I have from then are big, even the ones clearly designed for women. Nobody made the women's fitted or babydoll style tees until later. Most of the graphics were big, loud, and splashy. That's especially true of the Liquid Blue tie-dye style of shirt produced 1997-1999. Boy did I load up on those and back then, paying $25-30 apiece for them was a king's ransom. But I wuved them. They were so cool-looking. My favorite will always be the beautiful Queen Amidala one produced in '99.
Then there's the white t-shirt with the huge Leia illustration on it that I eagerly snapped up in 1995. Up until then I was irritated by the lack of Leia merch, until one day I saw that shirt on sale where I bought a huge chunk of my SW tees, Suncoast. It's another one of my favorites. That and Suncoast's 1997 Han and Leia tee.
A store called Another Universe at a local mall also supplied several of my SW tees and a couple of my X-Files tees. I picked up my humorous tees with SW action figures there as well as the TPM Obi-Wan one I got shortly before the film came out. When I wore it to Shore Leave in July '99, a fan-run Trek/whatever con I went to every year in Baltimore, some of the older slash ladies were ready to jump me for it!
Then there were the tees that captured some fad or other from that time. Remember those CK shirts EVERYBODY wore in 1996 or so? I had three SW knockoffs of them, courtesy of Suncoast and the Star Wars Magic Of Myth gift shop. I have a cute rave-style Leia tee I bought in 1997 but goshdurn it, the colors in the sleeves and the collar ran onto the white fabric after a trip to the washing machine.
There were the t-shirts that set kids off into a SW frenzy. There's a shirt I got at Suncoast in '96 that had a Han-In-Carbonite image on the back. I wore it to the mall one day and a little boy walked past with his mom. Once he saw the Han-In-Carbonite, he went crazy. "Mom! Look! Star Wars!!!" I got the same reaction when I wore my awesome AOTC t-shirt from the Senator Theater in Baltimore (R.I.P.) during the summer of '02. I was walking around a Marshalls and the image on the back sent a little boy into a tizzy. It made up for the sad lack of SW tees around the time AOTC came out. Of the four I have from that film, one was "unofficial," one was my souvenir shirt from Celebration II, and two were from the kids' department at K-Mart.
I thought I wasn't buying very many shirts over the past four or five years but it looks like that's when I really went hog-wild. From 2003 through 2010, I've bought or received 55 SW t-shirts. My last purchase? A Mexican-style calavera Han and Leia t-shirt from Etsy that arrived last week. The tees in recent years have been retro '70s-'80s style, ironic, and even reaching for hipness. Hot Topic took Suncoast's place and whatever I couldn't find in stores I got on the internet.
If you'll excuse me, I hear there may be a SW shirt on Teefury.com in a few minutes.
Monday night I counted all of the SW t-shirts I've bought or received just from 1993 to 2002. The last time I counted all of my SW t-shirts was in 1998 and back then I had 26 t-shirts. The grand total of shirts purchased up through today? 107. That doesn't count two SW hoodies, two track jackets, one denim shirt, two polo shirts, one sweatshirt, and a tank top. I bought 13 tees alone in 1997; yes, I can still remember when I bought every shirt!
What I do is I'll wear a shirt for a couple of years, then "retire" it to the collection. Occasionally, I'll break an oldie but goodie out. For example, I found a SW polo shirt I bought from the fan club--back when you had to do it through the mail--in 1998. It's still in excellent condition and doesn't look dated at all. So it's back in rotation.
Going over all of my older shirts, it's kind of funny to see how styles have changed since the 1990s. Most of the shirts I have from then are big, even the ones clearly designed for women. Nobody made the women's fitted or babydoll style tees until later. Most of the graphics were big, loud, and splashy. That's especially true of the Liquid Blue tie-dye style of shirt produced 1997-1999. Boy did I load up on those and back then, paying $25-30 apiece for them was a king's ransom. But I wuved them. They were so cool-looking. My favorite will always be the beautiful Queen Amidala one produced in '99.
Then there's the white t-shirt with the huge Leia illustration on it that I eagerly snapped up in 1995. Up until then I was irritated by the lack of Leia merch, until one day I saw that shirt on sale where I bought a huge chunk of my SW tees, Suncoast. It's another one of my favorites. That and Suncoast's 1997 Han and Leia tee.
A store called Another Universe at a local mall also supplied several of my SW tees and a couple of my X-Files tees. I picked up my humorous tees with SW action figures there as well as the TPM Obi-Wan one I got shortly before the film came out. When I wore it to Shore Leave in July '99, a fan-run Trek/whatever con I went to every year in Baltimore, some of the older slash ladies were ready to jump me for it!
Then there were the tees that captured some fad or other from that time. Remember those CK shirts EVERYBODY wore in 1996 or so? I had three SW knockoffs of them, courtesy of Suncoast and the Star Wars Magic Of Myth gift shop. I have a cute rave-style Leia tee I bought in 1997 but goshdurn it, the colors in the sleeves and the collar ran onto the white fabric after a trip to the washing machine.
There were the t-shirts that set kids off into a SW frenzy. There's a shirt I got at Suncoast in '96 that had a Han-In-Carbonite image on the back. I wore it to the mall one day and a little boy walked past with his mom. Once he saw the Han-In-Carbonite, he went crazy. "Mom! Look! Star Wars!!!" I got the same reaction when I wore my awesome AOTC t-shirt from the Senator Theater in Baltimore (R.I.P.) during the summer of '02. I was walking around a Marshalls and the image on the back sent a little boy into a tizzy. It made up for the sad lack of SW tees around the time AOTC came out. Of the four I have from that film, one was "unofficial," one was my souvenir shirt from Celebration II, and two were from the kids' department at K-Mart.
I thought I wasn't buying very many shirts over the past four or five years but it looks like that's when I really went hog-wild. From 2003 through 2010, I've bought or received 55 SW t-shirts. My last purchase? A Mexican-style calavera Han and Leia t-shirt from Etsy that arrived last week. The tees in recent years have been retro '70s-'80s style, ironic, and even reaching for hipness. Hot Topic took Suncoast's place and whatever I couldn't find in stores I got on the internet.
If you'll excuse me, I hear there may be a SW shirt on Teefury.com in a few minutes.
