Logo Tee
During the 2005-2008 New Rave comeback, one name that really sunk their feet into the fashion scene was House of Holland. Former fashion editor, Henry Holland made a splashy entrée as a designer in 2006 with a series of cheeky pun-tastic slogan t-shirts which were emblazoned with ‘UHU Gareth Pugh’ and ‘Get your freak on, Giles Deacon’, ‘Do me in the park Marc’, ‘I’ll show you whos boss Kate Moss’, to name a few. This brand was virtually a product of the go-to club night of the time, Boombox. Henry said that he started making t-shirts as something for him and his friends to wear to go to Boombox. He met his stylist, Sam Ranger and fellow collaborators Stuart Vevers and Katie Hiller at the club and with his best mate, supermodel Agyness Deyn. Ever since Boombox sadly closed its doors on New Year’s Eve 2007, Sunday nights in the capital have never been the same again. The club night brought back a love of dressing up (which I am obviously AALL for!) and became a safe space for experimentation where you could go to let your freak flag fly, which was no doubt hugely encouraged by the club’s own court photographer, Alister Allan. Allan would display photographic evidence of the night’s debauchery on dirtydirtydancing.com. In an era of raucous gay and gay-friendly parties, Boombox helped bring back fun and glamour to the equation. DJ, music writer and original Blitz kid, Princess Julia was a regular at the club and at 61, is still the beloved mother of London’s underground scene. For Princess Julia it was the sense of unpredictability that made Boombox; “It was a weekly night but every week WAS different!… and that’s really hard to maintain. It became seminal because it gave a platform for people to express themselves at the night and outside of it.”
As a 21-year-old second-year fashion student I remember flicking through magazines such as Dazed and Confused, Super Super (and even mainstream magazines such as Vogue) and seeing the anything goes and welcoming attitude of the club night really sparked my interest. The Dirty Dirty Dancing website was a well-frequented website by your’s truly as it was an amazing source of inspiration for the weekend’s outfits haha. So many of the pictures included House of Holland printed slogan tees and I wanted one sooooo badly! During the 2008 Easter holiday’s there was a Dazed and Confused exhibition at Baltic, in Gateshead, which sold exclusive House of Holland t-shirts; obviously, I had to snap those offerings up. Since then I have been lucky enough to build quite a large collection of slogan tees from the second-hand market. I managed to get;
Do me in the park Marc
Do me daily Christopher Bailey
Twinks and jocks are welcome at Boombox
Let’s get bruised Dazed and Confused
Swallow me whole Andy Warhol
Take off your clothes but leave on those Kick HOHs
I’ll get on all fours for Michael Kors
Get your freak on Giles Deacon
Give us a toss Karlie Kloss
At the time the designers that featured on these tees were pretty iconic; Gareth Pugh could do no wrong, Giles Deacon had his fingers in many many pies. Heidi Slimane was leading the way at Dior Homme, Christopher Bailey at Burberry and Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton. They did produce a Donatelle Versace version but I’ve never managed to get my hands on one! Needless to say, I would snap it up in a heartbeat. The model versions were incredible too, but again I have never seen any of them being sold on the second-hand market. I LOVED the colour combinations of the t-shirts and the bold fonts made them even more obnoxious LOL. For the 10th birthday of the House of Holland brand, they released a limited-edition collection of around 20 new t-shirts featuring designers and models of the moment such as Craig Green, Michael Kors, Phoebe Philo, Ashley Williams, Ricardo Tisci, JW Anderson and even Kendal Kardashian. When I saw they were doing this I was super excited but I soon lost interest when I saw the personalities they were featuring. The first wave of tees had used really influential names but I must say I wasn’t sure who some of the newer ones were LOL. It must have been my age haha. Needless to say, I did run to Selfridges and pick up two, and a matching phone case LOL.
I wanted to come up with a fun logo tee so I could create my own HOH-esque offering. I went with “Can’t get fancier than Van Cartier'“ because it ALMOST rhymes, and, let’s face it a saying couldn’t be more true LOL. One of the fun things about the HOH t-shirts was that the rhyming seemed off, but I think that had something to do with my Northeastern accent, as I’m SURE if you had a Southern accent it would all work a dream. I must say, it was pretty difficult to find a word that rhymed with Cartier so I did resort to good ol’ Google. Almost every word that came up would have been impossible to fit in a very short sentence until I found ‘fancier’. I wanted a soft pink/lilac colour for the screenprinting so I had to mix the colour. I went with white as a base and added around 1/3 red and a drop of blue. I thought by adding the blue it would have made a more purple but it actually made a more rose-like pink and I LOVED it! My screen printing skills have really improved-so my first attempt was the version I used for the shoot. The text turned out pretty crisp and I couldn’t have been happier. I’d have LOVED to make the print larger and closer in size to A3, rather than A4 but I found it difficult to stop the ink from slipping onto the t-shirt over the edge of the stencil. If you have any tips on screen printing or making stencils get in touch!
Sunglasses - Moschino
Earrings - ASOS
T-shirt - Fruit of the Loom
Jacket - Vintage Depop
Necklaces - ASOS and Etsy
Bag and Belt - Moschino
Trousers and Boots - ASOS