My THREEHUNDREDANDSIXTEEFIVE T-shirt challenge is now in its thirteenth Day of 'Extra Time', marking today as Day 378 on the overall project calendar. Yep. Still going. The T-shirts just keep on driving in. Literally.
Designer Maryam from fledgling brand Rella was kind enough to donate a very special tee to me back on Day 305; special because it arrived in advance of the brand officially being launched. It was a sneak preview garment from the forthcoming line and she picked my project as a means to expose it.
Half way through last week, I received another email from Maryam that told me all about the success Rella had had since going public, and that one of their tees called Constructivism was a stand-out favourite among customers. "I'd like you to wear a copy of it for your challenge" she said.
"Sure," I replied "but you'll have to get it to me pretty quickly - the challenge will be officially over any day now so it can't arrive too late or I won't be able to include it..."
If it were possible to hang-up an email, Maryam would have done so then.
She shoved her chair backwards from her desk and propelled herself rapidly across the office, grabbing a copy of the high-profile Constructivism garment from the hands of an admiring colleague as she flew past. As the wheels of her chair collided with the back wall, she tossed the tee into the arms of a waiting figure dressed head to toe in black and a smoky visor, straddling a motorcycle. He revved twice in acknowledgement before ripping off into the city.
Meanwhile, I'd gotten up, made some coffee, photocopied my face a few times, thrown out the coffee (I don't like coffee) and returned to my desk to find a man on a motorcycle poised on my keyboard and paperwork. Thank goodness I'd taken the coffee away - it would have gone everywhere.
The masked figure handed me a crisp white T-shirt before revving twice and ripping away again out the window from whence he came.
Definitely the fastest T-shirt delivery in history.
The T-shirt is this sturdy, comfortable article bearing a full-frontal illustration printed in black. The familiar Rella tiger plods through a wood-cut style landscape, framed by Russian text proclaiming the year of Rella's birth, 2013. The tee is garnished with construction details such as a deliberately longer back piece, defined by triangular slices made at the gusset to achieve a baggier look. It's details like this that reinforce the high quality of the Rella brand and make it so much more than just T-shirt printing.
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