Fringe | Contemporary Artist

Blog 13/9. Strange how people walk around with the names of cities on their t-shirts that they’ve never visited, and probably will never visit in their lives.

The amazing thing is that no one needs an explanation because it’s such a common fashion statement that we forgive the envy, and we think, well, even if you did go there, now you just want someone to feel jealous that you broke out for long enough, and went far away enough to get the shirt. At the very least.

It suggests that the place you’re in, when you wear the shirt, is so much worse than the place you’d like people to think you’ve been. Miami, London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Amsterdam. Do people in those cities want to wear a t-shirt brandishing the name of the sad place that you come from?

In popular culture that’s become a lame self-aggrandising compliment: I’ve done X and I’ve got the shirt to prove it. Imagine Elon Musk’s kid someday wearing a t-shirt, with the slogan: My father took a rocket to Mars and all he got me was this shirt.

Which makes me wonder what the capital of Mars will one day be called. And if it’s printed on a t-shirt will anyone think, well you could have got it at the airport, when you were on a connecting flight to somewhere else. #fringetheartist