Religion & Beliefs
The T-Shirts of the Soul
By Izzy Grinspan / December 1, 2006
With matters of spirituality, you can't win. Religion has a tendency to start wars (like the one still raging in our comments section.). Faith makes us uncomfortable. As for mysticism, well, no one seems to even know what it means. Least of all the Times Style section. I know this is nit-picky, but when I sat down to read a piece about a big new store in L.A. yesterday, one phrase jumped out at me:
Yet if fashion executives were to look beyond the granola rhetoric of Laurel Canyon circa 1975, beyond the $140 T-shirts with mystical-sounding phrases like “Texas Tokyo,” they may be forced to admit that Ms. Garduno is in fact very instinctual, that her ideas are prescient.
How the hell is “Texas Tokyo” mystical sounding? Is it supposed to make you think of, like, coyote Shinto spirits? Is the idea that Texas, a hot, dry, American state, and Tokyo, a big, busting, Japanese city, both represent such dramatic things that juxtaposing them immediately brings about some kind of kabbalistic explosion deep within your soul? But then I started thinking. Garduno charges $140 a t-shirt. If she’s got “Texas Tokyo,” then maybe I could try "Indiana Isfahan." Or "Louisiana Lagos." That’s $280 per shirt right there! Once I started, I couldn’t stop. On the subway into work, I came up with all of the following (to the tune of a cool $840): Oklahoma Oslo Kansas Kinshasa Washington Warsaw Kansas Kiev Minnesota Minsk Ohio Ouagadogou And now I think it’s your turn. Seriously, give it a shot — it's a lot more fun than it looks.



POST A COMMENT
Colorado Callais
New York Ninevah
Tennessee Tyre (sounds like an auto repair shop)
Alabama Addis Ababa
I'm sick and should be sleeping, but I keep getting up and coming back to the computer.
Boise Bhopal
Louisiana Lahore
Tallahassee Tabriz
Izzy, you deserve a Nobel Prize for this, long car rides will never be the same.
??? ?? ???,
Joey
Hawaii Hamburg
Delaware Dubrovnik
Montana Majorica
I could do this all weekend…
Spokane Suriname!
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