A Book. Of Vintage T-Shirts
From left, Marc and Patrick Guetta, owners of World of Vintage T-shirts on Melrose Avenue. Photos courtesy of Taschen.
Only in Los Angeles are there collectors with enough rare pop culture vintage T-shirts to fill a nearly 400-page picture book (that’s more than 650 T-shirts). Out from Taschen this month is the succinctly titled book, “Vintage T-shirts.”
Inside is a mere edited sampling of the personal, not-for-sale T-shirt collection of brothers Patrick and Marc Guetta, who own the simply titled store World of Vintage T-shirts on Melrose Avenue.
Our very own Alison A. Nieder provides a brief history of the T-shirt as an American classic, full of factoids that will wow your friends during your next game of Trivial Pursuit, the garmento edition.
Spoken in the way that true fashion hoarders can relate to, Patrick shares a story in the book's intro about how his vintage T-shirt collection started with an epic find:
"'We can’t sell this T-shirt! It’s the Police! The Police!!!' I grew up on the Police. I had imagined myself singing and playing guitar in front of 20,000 people as a member of the band. We couldn’t sell this shirt. It was part my youth, part my life."
These guys really really liked T-shirts with puns.
Pages and pages of vintage T-shirts. T-shirt graphic designers experiencing inspirational drought, rejoice.
