Rewind to three weeks back and we find ourselves in London. As promised I still needed to share some more stuff with you all and what follows is a great T-shirt project!

Walking through East End, on our way to Old Street, we happened to cross WeAdmire. A store like no other as what you discover there is no high street American Apparel or Urban Outfitters mainstream junk but real authentic t-shirts. I was even told that they have over 1,500 designs in their collection. What makes it even better is de shop owner Theo, who welcomes everyone to have a look around and gives you the inside story on WeAdmire first-hand. About time we let him tell us his story.

How did it all get started?

The motivation for the company sprang from the dire shortage of t shirts that express anything positive about the wearers of said shirts.  I recently had a conversation with someone about Abercrombie and Fitch.  They had praised A&F as an example of a good brand.  My question to them: what did wearing an A&F shirt say about the person wearing it?  Their reply wasn’t coherent.  For me A&F is just the extreme end of t shirts as nonsense which happened to lead to my question in the conversation I was having.  More generally the lack of shirts I wanted to buy was brought home to me by my purchase of a t shirt in Camden Market some years ago. The design was a simple hand painted detail from the Bayeux Tapestry. It was the first time I had seen a shirt that looked good and had some resonance with me. The fact such a ““get out of my way, that shirt has my name on it”” urge did not repeat for 20 years or so was the source of my motivation to start WeAdmire. Shirts that deliver real self expression are too few and far between.

We sold the first shirt via our website late December 08. It was slow going in the beginning, I think we might have sold our second shirt to the buyer of the first in January 09. From there things picked up. Nearly everyone who has bought a shirt has come back for more. Several of our customers have told us our shirts have changed their love lives. And many have told us our shirts are the only items they have bought for their nearest and dearest.

How does the creation of such shirts start

The brief to designers invites them to put the subject ahead of the aesthetic. This is because in a circumstance of informed and authentic admiration the aesthetic will tend to look after itself. In this regard the brief to designers is well expressed by the quote on our Goethe shirt: ““What is uttered from the heart alone will win the hearts of others to your own.”” Among other things this makes the point authenticity is interesting, almost irrespective of topic.

Because we produce our shirts on demand we can manage a huge range of subjects. Considerations of what might sell do not have to form the primary design filter. Just as well because picking winners has a well established history of failure.   Quality and authenticity however are always interesting.  A good example of this is our Leica FIII by Yukio Miyamoto.  The Leica FIII is presently our best seller. But if someone suggested an image like this applied to a t shirt might be a best seller I doubt you would believe it until you saw and handled the shirt.  Print on demand allows us to always take the chance.

I think its for that reason (amongst others) that designers enjoy working for us. By definition designers are interested in self expression. Providing expression is a mutually satisfying thing for both expressor and expressed. T shirts have loads to say and many ways of saying it.

Can you tell us a bit more about the printing process? I see its not the usual way.

We print at resolutions of 300 to 800 dpi. The process uses gas dispersion inks. They dye the fabric, they do not sit on the surface of the garment. They are colourfast and because they dye the fabric they will not crack, or otherwise deteriorate to any significant extent. The process does not alter the performance of the fabric and does not affect the feel of the garment. Because of this and because we print digitally we can print to scale. Broadly the area of the design is a consistent proportion of the area of the shirts.

Final question, what are your favourite pieces?

My favourite t shirt admiration stories include that of Hedy Lamarr. Not so much a case as they don’t make them like this anymore as the simple fact that such people come round with a frequency like that of Shakespeare, Muhammad Ali etc, one every few hundred years…

Thanks for all the info.

Needless to say we ended up walking out with a fresh shirt I got myself the Bill Shankly one which states “Some people think football is matter of life and death, I assure youit’s much more important than that”

WeAdmire Ltd

13-15 Great Eastern Street

London, EC2A 3EJ

or find them on facebook

Tagged: company, london, t-shirts, we admire, weadmire.net