Bootleg Embroidery Damage

By Miki Guadamur

I have a huge collection of these weird embroidered tags. Most of them come from crappy clothes—sweatshirts and tees that are so ugly that I just cut off the tags and use the actual garment to clean my toilet. This kind of merchandise is all over the streets of Mexico City, where I live, although most of it seems to originate in either the Asian Third World or Hong Kong, Taiwan, or South Korea.

My interest in these cute little guys started almost 25 years ago when lots of teenagers, myself included, were wearing sweaters and t-shirts with goofy embroidered mottos splashed across them. In Mexico there was this particular brand called Goldie, which you found mostly at street markets and which was sort of a ghetto version of Fiorucci.

But I digress. These are some of my favorite pieces from my collection. Fun, huh?

I’m guessing this is from the late 80s, the height of acid-house fever. This one was on the inside and the outside of a sleeveless yellow t-shirt. It was pretty killer, actually.

This one merges baseball, football, and soccer in an orgy of homo-phallic-jock self-indulgence, and it makes me feel kind of horny and celebratory all at once.

This was attached to the outside of a black t-shirt. I like the teeny-tiny stars all around the border.

It has “Summer Fun” as its slogan, it’s full of fluorescent beach-vacation stereotypes, and it was stitched inside a nice, warm sweater! Cómo se dice, “WTF?”

I don’t know if this one is referencing the Mexican state of Coahuila (in which case it is obviously misspelled), but it’s very possible, since Coahuila (as far as I know) was originally a desert. This one was found inside a red nylon jacket.

This one was inside a bootleg pair of Levi’s 501s. The thought of wearing a pair of jeans while working out is kind of revolting, but who am I to argue with the logic of Chinese bootleggers?

This tag was inside a pair of sport pants. It made them extremely uncomfortable, because the fucking thing has the same texture as a Brillo pad.

This was attached to a Lacoste-type shirt instead of the famous crocodile (in the same spot, at left-nipple level). It’s a strange-looking female bunny whose mouth and nose are fused together in a vaguely sex-organ-looking red mush.

This is an op-art psychedelic skier with sunglasses, and it wouldn’t look out of place blown up to six feet tall, hanging on the wall at some Rhode Island School of Design graduate’s art show. This tag was attached to a green t-shirt that had nothing else on it. Spooky.

The whys and wherefores of this tag are not important. I like to just bask in the glory and confidence of treating a broom and a mop as if they were a sword and a rifle. Do NOT fuck with the Magnum Force Janitorial team.