paintedlines

Coming soon: The lotC CafePress Store! Buy all your lotC logo wear here! Shirts, coffee mugs, mousepads...

I have very few guiding rules of dress. For the most part I'm all about comfort. The concept of being label loyal strikes me as stupid. It really comes down to fit, price, and taste. No one line can nail it all the time, and if it comes to the point of referring to what you wear as a "line of clothing" you are probably paying out the ass anyway.

This ideology leads me away from clothes that are blatantly promotional. Logos as patterns, slogans stretched across your chest. You are advertising the company - the catch being the fact that you paid for the right. We will now take a moment for that to sink in.

The real kicker is that, for some of you, your ego gets fed from shelling out obscene amounts of money to be walking billboards. "Look at the labels I can afford - you bunch of piss ant Wal-mart shoppers!" Now, steady yourself for this one: Chances are your threads are being sewn in the same sweatshops as the K-mart "Mike-e" sneaker. And let me tell you: lil Juanita, her mother, grandmother and the slew of young Asian female "cargo container immigrants" she works with, hate you.

Seems most of my posts tend to start with a rant ... huh. Anyway, steering back towards the topic at hand.

So most of my cloths - t shirts in this case - have either no logos or small, less noticeable ones. The only notable exceptions come from the family's yearly trip to the Outer Banks. And these are somewhat of a tradition. One, of course, is the acquisition of the annual Brew-Thru t-shirt. I still find it rather ironic that I have so many yet I don't drink beer - go figure. The other being a few shirts from the Nautica outlet down there.

Those where basically the exception, until now. I am now the proud owner of a "Blogger" shirt for the GoogleStore.

Its a nice lil shirt, it was cheap and has a big ol "B" right in the freak'n center of it. Now one might think: "Hey! What about your ideals?" Well, I'm glad you asked, because as sad as this sounds, I had to rationalize the purchase as it sat in the digital cart. I actually had an intellectual battle before I could bring myself to click and confirm the order!

With my own streak for self effacement, I found this to be both utterly logical yet almost humorously psychotic. In looking back I'm not even sure how I ended up at the store, since I tend to use Yahoo over Google (insert sound of geeks groaning here) but thats a topic for another day. But I felt the urge to buy, but what?

I looked at all the options and ruled them out one by one.
• Hoodies: No, well maybe later but it is summer and I want a t-shirt damn it!
• T-shirts: Oooo so many options...
• The Google shirts: Nope, they all have big logos. And to be honest their logo sorta sucks.
• The Trailer shirt: Well now, this I could do – its green! The Google logo is small. Ewww, nope they have goner and made the "feeling lucky" tag even more pseudo sexual than it already is! Next.
• Orkut shirt: Who even uses that site. Sound like someone gag'n anyway.
• Goggle Earth shirt: Big earth on the front with a joke about being "beta" - both lame and a little too "eco-huggy"
• Blogger shirts: Finally we are getting somewhere. And hey, i actually use this site!
• Black: Damn not only is the logo bright orange, which looks like a target on the chest, they spell out "Blogger" in big white letters. That breaks all the rules at once!
• Brown: Nice color. Don't have many ringers, and the logo is tone on tone with no overstatement of the name. And cheap too!
• SOLD!

All that for a shirt. But I'm picky - this and that has to be just right. I don't mind a logo if I like what it represents, just as long as it doesn't beat passers by over the head. And the simple "B" maybe just subtle enough to be visible but not really recognizable, unlike the Google logo. I sorta like that. In away its just like my Dogma gear. Fans recognize the hat, but it takes a hardcore fan boy to pick up on the shirt. Its just ever so subversive. Sending a message out, open to the world, yet its meaning is only decoded by a few.

Yet that much mental back and forth over a t-shirt?

Now I know why my friends hate shopping with me!