In search of the perfect t-shirt and taste
on shortcuts to taste, paris, marseille and dads in brooklyn selling t-shirts.
I love Paris the way that only someone who doesn’t live there can: with the rose-tinted glaze of a vacation fling that you never commit to, unbothered by its impracticalities.
After a vacation in Marseille, pretending to be an extra in Bonjour Tristesse, I returned to Paris. I wanted to maintain the leisurely pace of the south of France, and other than the Wolfgang Tillmans’ exhibit and an extensive facial, I didn’t plan much of anything. I ate the Nigerian shrimp creole at Waly-Fay, I had the perfect steak frites and foie gras at Bistrot Des Tournelles; I really didn’t need much more.
On my last day, I popped into a vintage store that I saw on TikTok1 and ended up chatting to the store owner – a suave Parisian man roughly my age. We connected over our Caribbean parents, his from Haiti and mine from Jamaica and Barbados respectively, and then I went to try on the single item that caught my eye: a t-shirt.
Longtime LOOSEY subscribers know how much I love a good t-shirt. I am a fierce defender of merch culture, regardless of whatever nonsense GQ propagates, and am always keen to scan the merch counter for a t-shirt at a concert after the opener wraps up. This next sentence is going to sound cringe, but: I love a t-shirt that feels like a shortcut to a story – be it merchandise from a restaurant that I loved2, a top from a show I enjoyed3, or just an old shirt from before I was born. There are a couple of Brooklyn dads – I don’t think they have kids, but that’s their energy – that I buy vintage t-shirts from religiously, and it's just become a bit of a uniform when I’m trying to cosplay as a chill Brooklynite. An old t-shirt and trousers. You can’t go wrong.
I was initially drawn to this particular t-shirt because of its ‘Chevy Performance’ logo, and thought it would pair nicely with my other vehicle-themed tops. Like Charli xcx, I have a special affinity for vehicles, with a shirt collection ranging from Harley-Davidson to Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, a Burger King x NASCAR Racing collaboration, and another Chevrolet t-shirt promoting some legion in the middle of America. The ten-minute Lana Del Rey ‘Ride’ music video did unthinkable damage to me. Most of my shirts have a story, either found at some vintage shop or ‘borrowed’ off the back of another boy, and when I put them on, I take a vacation to those times. But under the unforgiving lights of the fitting room, shrouded by a très petit curtain, I was immediately turned off by the shirt that I picked up.
What I had mistaken for holes, well-earned from years of wear and tear, were, upon closer inspection, cuts made by scissors, fashioned to look like holes. The precise incisions, all too alike to be natural, betrayed their origins. I looked closer. The frayed bottom of the shirt curled in a perfect edge, signalling it was likely cropped by a machine and not, as I had imagined, ripped by the brute, callused hands of a strong man. It was a shortcut, but to a falsified story. This discovery turned me off. I returned the t-shirt to the rack where I found it, thanked the shop owner, and promptly exited the store, making my way north in search of an almond croissant.
Slowly, Paris rendered itself differently to me. Suddenly, every clothing store I walked into seemed charmless. Like the t-shirt, the stores’ aesthetic, which was compromised by the garments its buyers curated and the ambience of the store, felt outsourced and manufactured. Every clothing store I went into had the same black and blue Salomon sneakers and the same issue of Popeye magazine. The overhead speakers all wafted a comforting mix of Clairo and Aphex Twin, with the impartial J. Cole slipping in for good measure. Their atriums were well-lit like a content production studio, beams of light ricocheting against the mirrors that doubled as walls. Design-wise, they were all furnished in beige and olive, with Donald Judd and Wolfgang Tillmans ‘readers’ splayed on top of leather ottomans that no one opened but everyone photographed with the steady shot of their iPhone Pro. As if all men get hungry when they shop4, there was often a gimmick involving food: a ‘New York-style slice’ for ten euros, or a collab with a smash burger joint, whose imagery looked like it was shot by Terry Richardson. No shade to that smash burger joint; I tried it and it slapped. There was nothing special about the clothes either.
What these stores presented was a shortcut to taste. The taste was not tethered to a specific geography other than the internet of streetwear culture. Sure, I was in Paris, but I had been to these stores before – in Sao Paulo, in Seoul, in Toronto, in Tokyo. I could have been anywhere. Their curation approach was born on the feeds, but before that, the forums, rinsed with a Millennial Boy filter legible to anyone who perused JJJJound in their youth or was mesmerized by My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy when it first came out. I have wondered why the early 2000s Y2K boy aesthetic didn’t survive like the Y2K girl did, but it turns out the late 2010s boy aesthetic still reigns Supreme.
On Boyhood
There comes a point in a man’s life, roughly between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-two, when he decides to purchase a film camera. The camera becomes an extra appendage for the man, strapped to him like his shadow, accompanying him to various social functions: the beach, winter vacations, graduations, parties, and the like. I regre…
I’m not knocking these stores’ curatorial choices, as they mirror my early experiences with defining my own taste. I lived it, spending weekends in high school lining up outside of Goodfoot in Toronto for the latest Nike SB Dunks. I remember those storefronts and that era vividly, spending the money I earned from Tim Hortons and Old Navy on Nike Dinosaur Jr’s that barely fit while early members of OVO walked out with all the good sizes. I remember ringing up at the register with the guy who would go on to be Drake’s creative director5, listening to early mixtapes produced by Boi 1Da, who lived in the next town over. I remember shouldering my way through concerts to see M.I.A., Little Dragon, Le1f, and Beach House. I remember a girl named Claire from Montreal opening up for Lykke Li and years later clocking that she was Grimes after listening to ‘Oblivion’ for, like, the millionth time. I’d wear my best clothes – the now disgraced Phat Farm and Sean Jean – zooming up on the train from the suburbs to catch the show, and leave with merch as proof that there was culture beyond the town I grew up in. I have never resold a pair of Nike SBs from that time, but when I’m at my parents' house, I slip my feet into an old pair as I step out to run errands. None of those concert venues or stores exist anymore, and the artists that used to rule them have nearly all been cancelled, but in Paris, the shops are still alive.
I think back to the idea of shortcuts to interrogate my taste, weighing the pros and cons. Aren’t my t-shirt-selling “Brooklyn Dads” offering a shortcut to a time that I’ve never lived through? And TikTok, serving me restaurant and store recommendations – that must be a shortcut, yes? Heck,
’ Marseille advice was a (great) shortcut, too.Maybe shortcuts aren’t so bad if they take you back to a place you've been, a heritage you've lived. And if you haven’t been there before, maybe that’s fine, too. It’s just a vacation, like a Paris jaunt that you don’t need to commit to. You can try it on and take it off again, much like an old t-shirt.
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Strike one.
Bistrot Des Tournelles recently started selling a dope t-shirt, but it was 50 euros, which is more than the steak lol, so I had to pass.
I'm currently writing this in my Anne Imhof House of Doom shirt.
I do.
I think OVO has pretty terrible merch, and, despite going to many OVO fests back when I lived in Toronto, I don’t own a single thing from them.
Ah, you should try charity shops in London instead. None of this aesthetic nonsense, just a lot of rags and sometimes you find the perfect rag.
“An old t-shirt and trousers. You can’t go wrong.”