T-shirts continue to be at the forefront of the youth culture fashion movement, often launching new brands, delivering personal messages, and creating a street culture sense of fashion that’s as creative and unpredictable and fast as the time it takes to silk-screen a plain T in the name of personal style. In this upcoming series from Label Networks, we will deliver some of the top graphics seen from the streets of North America, Europe, and Japan. For subscribers to our North American, European, Japan, or China Youth Culture Studies (including Global Youth Culture subscribers), we’ll also be proving data analysis, consumer preferences, retailer information, and future forecasting based on the T-shirt, denim, and the sneaker culture marketplaces over the next few weeks to correspond with the visuals in graphics.

In Part 1 of our series is a look at some of the more humanistic graphics taking shape in T-shirts as more people use fashion as a statement and personal element of connection.

Key Trends in T-shirt Graphics Part 1 include:

• Jacks, spades, cards in design motifs such as the Burton shirt
• Kings and crowns as seen with KREW
• Patterns in black and white that resemble a punk rock vibe, but diffused with meaning in the pictures such as a face as one of the replica design patterns
• Script in a multiple of texts that give meaning outside of the actual words stated
• Prep diamonds on T-shirts instead of jerseys
• Bob Marley resurrection as Rastafari continue to expand an influence across cultures and ethnicities as Peace becomes a priority to a new generation
• Faces of people with expressions that give meaning to graphics
• Guns paired with roses; irony in general in times of war and turmoil
• Heart murmurs as buildings or as animals
• Animal print graphics such as zebra stripes and tigers, but often in neon
• Obey with stars combined with graphics—becoming emblematic of the brand
• Graphics on different areas of the T such as sides, sleeves, off-center, shoulders
• Skulls used in multiples as a specific motif
• Small print graphics arranged as a graphic pattern itself
• Colors: predominately black and white, reds, pink, brown