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Vice Blog

FASHION ISSUE EXTRA - AKIKO'S BAND T-SHIRTS

I'm in America touring with PRE right now. We played at SXSW and we are now on the west coast. It's been great fun. But today I'm pissed off and I've got some things to say something about band T-shirts.

I'm always seeing people wearing Sonic Youth's Goo, Black Flag, No Age and Minor Threat T-shirts, I mean, even the guy from Razorlight wears a Minor Threat Tee, it's unbelievable. There are so many kids about wearing Misfits T-shirts who've never heard the band, but the other night I witnessed something even darker. I was with some kids in Karaoke Box and one of them was wearing a Nirvana T-shirt so I stuck "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on so we could sing it together; but he said he'd never heard the song. Fuck. That's so fucked up its unbelievable. Look divs, don't just fucking wear a band's T-shirt because it looks cool, it will end up making you look like a dick. It pisses me off particularly because I'm in bands and I make T-shirts.

I make and design my bands' T-shirts on very limited runs, we never repeat prints and always change designs once we run out of one design. I also design T-shirts for other bands, if I like the bands and if they don't have money then I do it for free, but sometimes a band I don't like ask me to do some designs. It's not so cool, but I do it for the money; if they pay me loads.

This is a design I did for The Big Pink. Milo BP gave me some images from My Own Private Idaho and I came up with the design.

This is PRE's new T-shirt. The picture was a photo we stole from a frat house we played at last year in America. We designed it together and did the tie-dye while we on tour.

AKIKO