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Only black is the new black

“Unhappy, darling?” asks Gomez Addams. “Oh yes. Yes, completely,” answers Morticia, glancing at her husband and smoothing the glistening black of a corseted gown with a vampire’s collar. Black is to the Addams family what red shorts are to Mickey Mouse – a uniform that signals an identity, a perspective on the world and a way of occupying it. Black – serious black, gothic black, seductive black, restrained black, sculptural black – is back in fashion. When designers were preparing their 2020 & 2021 collections, the chic noncolour appeared an elegant proposal, suited to the growing taste for restraint and simplicity as we counted the environmental cost of overconsumption and grew weary of ricocheting trends. Who knew a global pandemic,...

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The Most Parodied Painting In The World

Try looking up “American Gothic parodies.” You’ll get hundreds and hundreds of pages full of satirical replicas of American Painter Grant Wood’s most famous work. These comical copies of Wood’s original, are some sort of mockery of American pop culture meant to provoke laughter on people. In these parodies, we can find the replacement of the Iowan farmers for movie characters, animals, politicians, and cartoon figures, such as the Minions. American Gothic has to be the most parodied piece of artwork out there, there is even a website called americangothicparodies.com with a mass collection of parodies of this painting. But why? This iconic painting, created in 1930, depicts a gothic house with two farmers (a man and a woman) in...

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The Vintage Aloha Shirt

Vintage Aloha Shirt, Circa 1960 The aloha shirt, also referred to as the Hawaiian shirt, is a style of dress shirt originating from Hawaii. They are usually short-sleeved and made from printed fabric. Often worn untucked, and worn casually or as informal business attire in Hawaii. "Aloha Friday", a now-common tradition of celebrating the end of the workweek by wearing more casual attire on Fridays, initially grew out of an effort to enhance the island spirit. The basic design of the Aloha shirts is: printed, mostly short-sleeved, and collared. They usually have a left chest pocket sewn in, often with attention to ensure the printed pattern remains continuous. Aloha shirts may be worn by men or women. Women's aloha shirts...

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Iron Maiden: Pioneers of band graphic artwork

Eddie The Head, Derek Riggs, hidden messages and The Final FrontierHeavy metal’s identity is rooted almost as deeply in its imagery as the music itself, and British pioneers Iron Maiden were (and some band members still are) proud exponents of the long hair, ripped-denim, spandex and leather uniform of the '80s. Maiden’s image, however, is all the more enduring - and somewhat remarkably for a heavy metal band, endearing - thanks to the most famous band mascot of all time, Eddie The Head. Originally designed by Derek Riggs, adopted by the band, and brought to life as a blood-drooling mask at the back of the stage; Eddie’s been a perennial, zombie-like fixture at almost every gig, and on almost every...

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One Tee One Kg

Plastic recovery: How your T-shirt purchase will prevent a kilogram of plastic rubbish from entering the ocean. For every T-shirt order made during our ‘One Tee One Kg’ promotion, a kilogram of ocean-bound plastic is recovered and recycled - the equivalent of 50 plastic bottles. We count the orders and fund the plastic recovery that is done through our friends at Plastic Bank. The offer is enabled automatically on all restore t-shirt purchases, so all that's left for you to do is is to rock the restore t-shirt that you buy and help spread the word of #noplanetb. Find out when the next One Tee One Kg weekend is on by following u’s on Instagram or read on to learn more about how the...

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