"Give Me Back My Black T-shirt"

I am a big fan of t-shirts.

In fact, covering music for the past 15 years, most of the pay I get is in band t-shirts (and I have no idea why they are always black).

Over the past couple of week, I've come across two great t-shirt companies that are worth blogging about.

Worn Free

Launched in 2005, Worn Free is a rock T-shirt company that wants "to resurrect the coolest shirts of all time."

The label reproduces t-shirts worn by rock legends like Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, Gram Parsons, Johnny Ramone and Joan Jett (among many others). The shirts, though not exactly cheap, are among the softest I've ever worn (yup, that's a good thing).

Here's a little more from their press materials:"We’ve spent more than a decade combing worldwide photo archives of music and style icons, learning what they’ve been wearing and bringing it straight to you."

Check out the catalog - the Joey Ramone shirt is really cool.

PLAYBACK CLOTHING

Another great shirt company and this one won't make you feel like a materialistic jerk for buying yet another t-shirt.

This Brooklyn company offers t-shirts and sweatshirts created by recycling cotton scraps and plastic bottles. "PLAYBACK is on a mission to dissolve the uncomfortable, expensive, cardboard look of past sustainable clothing, and replace it with a hip new model that combines quality, style and color." Not just for jam-band lovin' hippies, the shirts are actually very cool looking.

Here's some more info from the company: "Unlike other sustainable brands that take rolls of organic fabric and dye them into color, PLAYBACK achieves its profound success by utilizing the preexisting color of the original recycled material to color the yarn. This eliminates one of the most harmful processes used in clothing production- the chemical dyes. Since the products are made with only existing materials, PLAYBACK has also eliminated the need for extra cotton growth and in turn does not require massive amounts of land and water. By reducing the amount of textile and plastic bottle waste, PLAYBACK takes recyclables out of the landfill and puts them to good use."

The color names themsleves are cool as well: "Beer Bottle Brown," "Soda Bottle Green" and "Water Cooler Blue". Here's a link to their catalog.