What Makes a Thread Hippie Tee Special?
Forget the perfect black dress, the graphic tee is my most versatile wardrobe staple. Give me a broken-in, easy fitting tee with a great graphic and I’ll dress it up under my fav velvet blazer or dress it down on my way to yoga class. A great tee is the must have for all my outfits.
But what happened to a great graphic tee? The options I see today are usually bands and brands, printed on really thin, kind-of-cotton fabrics in the same fits over and over. We can do better! I started Thread Hippie CA to make the t-shirts I want to wear. Easy fits made from soft, durable cotton with hand drawn designs that actually stand for something - the way graphics tees used to be.
It’s been a wild ride and I love what we’ve started, I love that our tees are making their way out into the universe, and I love sharing the story of what makes a Thread Hippie tee so special. Check it out!
Great Fabrics and Our Special Vintage Wash
A great graphic on a crap tee isn’t my jam. So before we even think about designs we focus on finding fabrics that are made to last. Not only do we use 100% cotton, but we use mid weight fabrics that we know, as we like to say, will last several trips around the sun. These aren’t crazy heavy and they aren’t so thin that you can see right through them, our fabrics are year round weights just like my favorite vintage tees from the 70s and 80s - you know ones that were made the right way!
And I just love our wash and softening process. We wash our fabrics in a specially created vintage wash that both softens the cotton and adds our subtle dye colors. There is nothing loud or rigid about what we are making. Our goal is to create fabrics that feel broken-in, but still have plenty of life to live. The results are amazing textures and what seems like an almost impossible softness in a new tee.
Easy Fits
When it came to creating the fits for Thread Hippie, I turned to my closet for inspiration and the easy, versatile fits I’ve always loved. I’ve just never been into overly tight fits or tees that I can’t actually live my life in. I’m after fits I can wear to yoga, down to the beach, or out into the night - I’m after flexible you know?!
Our short sleeve boxy tee is my take on a classic tee, our oversized tee has the perfect drop shoulders and length, and even our crop has a loose, breezy fit. These tees don’t get in the way of life, they just become part of it.
Cut and Sewn in LA
LA made the casual t-shirt the iconic wardrobe staple that we all know today. And even though so much of the apparel-making machinery and know-how has left the states over the past several decades, we found that Los Angeles is still home to some of the highest quality woven manufacturing in the US.
I think making our tees must be what it feels like to pull a band together. We aren’t only looking for skilled craftspeople to contribute to the vision, but everyone has to buy into the vibe. Part of our vibe is a love of all people, so part of being able to make our tees in LA means we can look our partners in the eyes, watch how people are treated, and believe we are contributing to reversing the human cost of fast fashion. Good work and good tees, that's what we’re about.
Mindfully Created, Cosmically Inspired
I’ve got several tattoos. One from when I wanted to train dolphins, another from my days as a hairstylist, and another honoring my native heritage - and I’m probably not done yet. My husband doesn’t have any ink, and the big baby probably never will! But he describes a graphic tee like wearing a tattoo, and I really love that. A great graphic tee is a way to share a bit of yourself with the world.
Part of the inspiration behind Thread Hippie is to recreate that version of the graphic tee. We pull a lot of inspiration from the movements of the 1960’s and 70’s, looking for ideas that speak to self-love, peace, equality, and our cosmic significance. Our goal is to finish off our tees with a graphic just as intentional as the work that went into creating it.
Screen Printing the Old School Way
This turned out to be one of the most difficult partnerships to find. So much of modern printing is done using plastisol inks, heavier inks formulated to sit on top of synthetic fabrics in order to create the most efficient processes and perfect prints. Yes, think of fast fashion.
We’ve got a different approach. Since we start with all cotton fabrics and continue to work on the softness during construction, we can’t have a heavy hard graphic sitting on top of our tees. And come to think about it, we aren’t after perfectly reproduced images anyway. We specifically use a water-based ink printing process because it gives us a softer print, ink that sets into the fabric, and vibrant colors and finishes that just come out beautiful. No two prints will come out exactly the same. It's a perfect imperfection we just love, and real hippies dig it!
Finished With Our Hand Printed Labels
This may be our favorite part - and it’s the part that everyone tells us we have to stop doing, but we can’t. After designs are printed on our tees, they come back to our studio where we screen print, cut and sew in each label at the neck. We call these our labels of intention because they share a bit about why our tees exist. It’s really a final meditative step, our final promise to you that this tee was put out into the universe with reason and purpose.
Check out Thread Hippie and find the next magical tee meant to live in your wardrobe for years to come.