Stormtroopers invade Harajuku

I mentioned a while ago that there was a Star Wars t-shirt event in Uniqlo Ginza and Uniqlo’s UT Harajuku stores. I didn’t have a chance to attend but a couple of Japanese bloggers did. Even if you can’t read Japanese you can enjoy the photos.

Check out these two Japanese Star Wars fan sites to see more pictures.

• Japanese Garrison
• STARWARS FAN

The tees that Uniqlo released are not great but they are officially licensed if that’s your thing. They do have a pretty cool vintage vibe though. Again, the site is in Japanese and you need to scroll down a little to see the 6 Star Wars tees on offer.

Star Wars T-Shirts coming to UT

Star Wars fans: mark your calendars. Uniqlo have announced that they will be releasing a Star Wars line on March 3rd 6th in the Harajuku UT store as well as Uniqlo Ginza. So if you are in Tokyo on that day you might want to check it out. They note that Boba Fett won’t be making an appearance at the stores. I’m not quite sure what that means though.

I have to go to Tokyo on that day and it is fairly close to Harajuku so I might just pop in to see what’s happening. That’s a big might though. Wrong day. Woops.

Sweet Zebra Tee at UT

This is a very pretty t-shirt for girls and if you like zebras all the better. This is available in the US but you have to order it by email if you can believe that. You’d think that Japan’s richest man would get that e-commerce store set up.

Shiro to Kuro means black and white…well actually means white and black.

Cost: just $15.50 plus shipping.

20 Days Left for Submissions to Edo Label

There are now over 100 designs in the running for the Edo Label t-shirt design contest. The designs are quite varied with most of the submissions coming from Japan. There have been quite a few non-Japanese entries too though and there is plenty of time for you to submit yours too. There are 20 days left so if you are planning on submitting you had better get around to creating your design soon.

There are two prizes of 50,000 yen which works out at around US$500 and submissions close midnight September 30th, Tokyo time.

Edo Label looking for t-shirt designers

I haven’t been posting as much as I’d like recently but hopefully I will get back in the groove soon. Of course I did have a virus on my pc and my web sites were hacked but the fact is that I have just been pretty busy recently. One of the things that I have been busy with is Edo Label. Edo Label is a soon to be opened online t-shirt store based in Japan. The website will be bilingual so even though it is based in Japan so you don’t need to break out the Japanese text books and kanji dictionaries to participate in the website. Yes, I said “participate”. Edo Label will be a community driven website with many ways for the users to interact with each other.

In the run up to the launch of the store Edo Label is holding a t-shirt design contest. Submissions are being accepted for t-shirt designs for the first tees that will be sold in the store. In fact the contest has just been opened with 2 prizes of $500. There is no special theme but you do have to include the Edo Label logo in the design. You are even free to butcher the logo. It can be altered in almost anyway as long as it remains recognizable.

The contest closes on September 30th and the winners will be announced on October 14th. See Edo Label for Terms and Conditions.

Cannes Lions T-Shirt Grand Prix 2009 Winners

Last November I told you about the Cannes Lions T-Shirt Grand Prix and now I present the winners to you. Sounds formal. LOL. Anyways, back then I couldn’t find any information about a cash prize and still can’t but one of my readers said there was a cash prize of about one million yen and for the Cannes Lions T-Shirt Grand Prix 2010 there is a US$10,000 cash prize which is about one million yen so he could be right.

There were 1,448 designs sent from 51 different countries. This was shortlisted to just 10 designs and finally the winner, a university student in Tokyo known as Sho, won with his design entitled KING. I’m not too sure but I think that the t-shirt above bears the winning design and is available in Uniqlo’s Japan web site for 1,500 yen.

I think it says the 10 finalists are (or will be) available in the store but as I write this there are only 5 in the showcase. Check them out.

Two New Tees from TAB

Tokyo Art Beat have released two t-shirts just in time for the summer. I have to say that I am a little disappointed that they didn’t have a model shoot like they did the first time I mentioned them in this blog. I guess it could be another sign of the economic downturn that has gripped Japan. The shirts on the other hand are not a disappointment. I much prefer these to the last pair of releases and I especially like the green version of
Modularly Yours by Ian Lynam.

This actually my favorite of all the t-shirts I have seen at Tokyo Art Beat because it captures so many aspects if Japan and does it in style.  It is available in white with TAB’s pink and blue print as well.

The next t-shirt has a pretty solid design too, by Japanese artist, Teppei Kaneuji. It is a fun design and one you need to look at closely to appreciate. It is also available on a dark tee with gold and white print.

While these tees have vastly different styles, the thing they have in common is that people will spend a lot of time staring at them trying to figure out what is going on so if you are uncomfortable when people stare at your chest this may not be the tee for you.

Tees are both 3,500 yen + shipping.

Cafepress and Upsold Collaboration

As some of you must know by now, Rude Retro is based in Japan. Because of that I have of course checked out some Japanese PODs. Even if I haven’t gotten off my lazy ass and actually opened an account with one and uploaded the designs. All the ones I have seen are pretty ugly or don’t have a good commission structure so I didn’t want to waste my time. Anyway I was checking out Upsold.com a few days ago when I noticed the Cafepress logo. A quick scan tells me that Upsold are going to be releasing all their designs into the Cafepress marketplace. I have mixed feelings about that of course as I have a Japanese themed Cafepress store which will no doubt suffer from the sudden influx of 1.4 million designs from Japanese designers. Unless Upsold reciprocated by selling Cafepress designs on their site I don’t think there is any real benefit for current shopkeepers. I’m not so sure that Upsold could handle 140 million Cafepress designs though.

According to their press release (Japanese pdf) they are starting off the collaboration by affiliating Cafepress on the Upsold site which is cool for us shopkeepers. It may bring in some more sales. I thought it was interesting that they are using cpshop as the script to sell Cafepress items on their site. This press release from Upsold was issued on March 17th 2009.

Update:  According to Leslie Nuccio at Cafepress, “Just a heads-up that the Upsold deal is purely an affiliate deal. That press release is incorrect, and we’re working to get it fixed.
If they choose to upload designs, they’d do it the same way any other Shopkeeper would. However, the deal we did was just an affiliate deal (they’re the affiliate).”

That may alleviate some worries but Cafepress shopkeepers have more pressing concerns, methinks.

24 Japanese Designers + Graniph

I am not quite as impressed with Graniph as some people (not looking at anyone in particular, Andy from HYA) but they do seem to support the arts which I is great. Of course it’s a two way street so it is in their best interests to support them. Recently (in February) they released 24 new t-shirts which were designed by Japanese artists trying to capture Japanese culture in a design. Some of them I just don’t get but that happens a lot to me. One in particular made me laugh out loud. Yes, the asses one.

Graniph is a Japanese t-shirt store whose bricks and mortar presence is spreading around the world as well as Japan and their web site can be navigated in both English and Japanese. They ship worldwide.

Graniph in Harajuku

Japanese t-shirt store, Design T-Shirt Store Graniph, will soon open a brand spanking new flagship store in Harajuku. Apparently there will be an art gallery inside in the store too. You know, just in case you get bored looking at the t-shirts.

Harajuku is amazing for t-shirt aficionados anyway but many of them are pricey. Graniphs tees are a very affordable ¥2,500 (or about that) and about  ¥4,200 for two. Of course if you are in Harajuku you always drop into UT for even cheaper tees. The UT store is very cool.

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