The unofficial uniform of Broadway
Of course the residents of Lakeview (Lakeviewers? Lakeviewese?) are overjoyed to see the opening of the new Threadless store after more than nine months of looking at the storefront waiting for something to happen. The actual space is bright and airy, if not a bit small. The video screens showing people wearing the shirts in folded piles below are a nice touch.
But there is a problem.
One of the premises of fashion, hipster or otherwise, is that you want to be sufficiently unique while still operating within some (fuzzy) bounds. While women have known for years the shame and anger associated with wearing the exact same dress to a party, men are generally new to this game. Threadless used to be perfect for indie kids because they had enough limited-run styles to let everyone have something unique. Shirts popular enough to make it to reprints, like "The Communist Party", have become common enough to be uncool. It's a byproduct of the declining costs of the production for various forms of culture that people can be into hundreds of different bands that sound alike or wear hundreds of different t-shirts that look sort of similar.
How does this effect Lakeview?
The opening of the store has generated massive neighborhood buzz and thousands of people have come by to visit it and browse the dozen or so different designs available. With relatively few options in the store itself, you're already starting to see more and more people out in the street wearing the same designs. This morning, I saw a guy in front of the bicycle store on Wellington wearing the above design in sweatshirt form, only to see a barista at Intelligetsia wearing the same shirt three minutes later. The day before, I saw two people loitering in front of Argo with that ladybug shirt. How much longer will it take for the Threadless store to be destroyed by its own success?
Thanks for the kind words :)
The store showcases 20 designs at a time and 10 of them get rotated out every Friday with new stuff. This means that each design spends a max of 2 weeks in the store. We're hoping that as time goes on and the buzz dies down a little bit, the designs will still retain their limited feel.
Think of it this way... there may only be 20 designs in the store at any given time, but there will be 520 designs rotated through the store every year.
At least there's turnover.
That ladybug shirt is wretched. However, I think I may have to cave in and order one of those Communist Party shirts. It's kind of cute.