The Tea Shirt

Meryl Smith’s Tea Shirt is the latest addition to a new movement in casual fashion. It’s stained with real tea leaves, and her label bears an uncanny resemblance to a Lipton label. The shirt is at once a functional art piece and a reinvention of how stains are perceived.

Smith’s Tea Shirt is reminiscent of an upcoming art installation. Dirty Laundry: The Art of the Stain in Modern T-Shirt Design showcases artists’ interpretations of the word ‘reuse’. Each artist will stain a shirt and create it into a work of art. Among the featured artists: Alan Konishi, April Lee, Andrew Degraff, Christopher David Ryan, Damien Correll, Frank Chimero, Jason Laurits, Labour (Wyeth Hansen and Ryan Dunn), Kate Bingaman-Burt, Keetra Dean Dixon, Kris Chau, Mike Petty, Nikolay Saveliev, Nathaniel Russell, Roanne Adams, Rosemarie Fiore, Roland Adams, Steve Kiyabu, Simone Rubi, Tim Gough, Topos Graphics, and Travis Stearns.

Whether it’s grass, grease, or ketchup, participants of the show are challenged to incorporate the stain into a custom designed silkscreen, converting “ruin” to “remix.”

In step with a growing social trend, Dirty Laundry assigns value to those items deemed valueless, further broadening our understanding of the ever relevant mantra, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”