01. “Think Different”
Launched at August in Madison, WI, the first collection of printables for FAKE CLOTHING consisted of a limited release of 3 graphic tees, complimented for the sake of the in-store release by a small collection of “jawnz edits”.
There was no specific theme to the collection other than the stolen tagline, “Think different”. As you probably already know, this was a famous tagline used by Apple Computer Inc. between 1997 and 2002.
Apple has always had an outsize role in my life. As early as I can remember our home computer was the famously colorful iMac G3, advertised above. (We had the blue one on the far left). Beyond the G3, I can clearly remember each Apple device I have personally owned, from the iPod nano 2nd generation, to the MacBook Air I am using to write this very bio. Without even realizing it until now, the colors of this offering clearly had a subconscious influence on the color palette of this collection.
What does this have to do with the other two tees, though? I think the mantra of “Think different” applies in many ways to the overall FAKE CLOTHING philosphy, which is to inspect and question the relationships between art, design, and commerce. This can be seen clearly with the tromp l’oeuil printed Jacquemus bag over “FAKE” varsity lettering, as well as in the aforementioned “Think different” tee, with a photorealistic honeycrisp apple replacing the iconic Apple logo.
Each of these designs also bring into question the idea of what is real and what is fake, the other (obvious) tenet of FAKE CLOTHING. Due to the nature of the photorealistic DTG print, especially in contrast to the flat block lettering, the bag at first appears real. Further inspection reveals its true nature, but it does represent something real; this is a photo of an actual bag I own and carried daily at the time of this tee’s creation. Similarly the apple appears to have a sticker on it, but this is another level of trompe l’oueil. In fact, the sticker was an actual sticker from an apple I ate, which I then photographed and edited to read “Fake” instead of Rainier.
The last tee to mention is the Fake© logo tee. I resisted ever doing something like this, always preferring to use a logo that would never make for an interesting “Bogo” (thats hypebeast for box-logo, for those who aren’t brain broken by jawnz enthusiasm) style tee, but when going through some old work, I remembered the sharpie-written “signature” I had made for one of my first printable designs, a tongue-in-cheek take on Magritte’s famous Treachery of Images from the Surrealism movement. I realized that with its inauthentic “copyright” symbol, and tacit reference to SAMO (Jean-Michel Basquiat’s street art moniker before becoming the darling of the 1980’s art world), this logo embodies this (streetwear) branch of FAKE CLOTHING.
This collection all basically sold out before I could even hold the release party, and its highly unlikely I’ll re-release any of these designs, with the exception of the “Shogo” tee (that’s Sharpie + logo, I just made that up and decided that’s what it’s called now). But thanks to everyone who supported me with this release. -AH