- 100% Original Hand Drawn Artwork From 1988!
- 2X 80s Retro Puffed-Ink!
- One-Time-Printing ONLY!
- Two Sided Pattern! Design is exactly the same on the front and the back!
- Super 1980's!
- Unisex - If you are in between sizes purchase 1 size up
Designed With Puff-Ink 3D Texture (That's What Made 80s/90s Shirts So RAD!)
that will age/crack with wear, for a one of a kind/personalized vintage look!
A very light and extremely soft cotton!
a real "classic 1980's souvenir tee" has a feeling that goes with, a sense of uniqueness. That uniqueness is what we've tried to recreate with Gecko Surf N' Sun. You won't easily Find ANYTHING like this in today's world, unless you eBay retro surf tees. But why is it that so many "modern" shirts today can't recreate that retro surf vacation feel? It's something that can be EXTREMELY HARD to put your finger on -- but Gecko gets it.
It's the super small details that can make or break the nostalgic vibe of a tee.
Nowadays -- even when people are trying to re-issue old, retro tees, there are processes that have been engrained in our heads over the past 3 decades. One of those is to "make an outline" around the art (in white or black) so that the design, or the puffed ink can "pop" more. We do this to some of our tees on occasion, (and we did it often back when too).
However, many "true" 1980's vacation tees did not have this "line" around the graphic on the shirt. Whether that was because the printer creating the tees wasn't sophisticated enough to realize it needed it, didn't have a machine that could handle it, or just didn't want to increase the cost of the shirt -- spending money on the extra ink -- depends on the the individual tee. It's a detail that would be engrained in any printer these days (as digital printing brought down the cost, and enhanced the ability for printers who couldn't afford the bigger machines). However, when re-creating authentic retro apparel, it's these little details that so many tee companies don't realize -- or remember -- but that subliminally make a MAJOR difference in the nostalgia factor.
What ends up happening when the "outline" is not added, is that -- depending on the color of the shirt -- some of the puff ink colors can blend directly into the shirt. You only see them when you are up close, or after wearing the shirt over and over as the tee (or the ink) begins fade and crackle.
For Surf & Sun, we intentionally decided to leave out the outline -- the way it was over the first few years we printed it -- in order to completely capture the nostalgia the right way. It's extremely hard to describe, but when holding an outlined version and non outlined version in your hands -- you'll realize the nostalgia kicks in differently -- almost in overdrive with the non - outlined version.