The Vintage T-Shirts Expedition

We’ve been noticing that a lot of our new customers land on our website after searching for vintage t-shirts. Many of them find what they’re looking for and buy a couple t-shirts. Some of them, however, click away when they don’t see the t-shirts they were expecting. The way we see it, we’re one of three distinct varieties of vintage t-shirt shops online. There are:

1. Places that carry t-shirts advertising vintage products or pop culture nostalgia, like Tab and RC Cola t-shirts or the Ghostbusters and Sesame Street tees.
2. Places that offer t-shirts with vintage styling, as in 70s fonts and 50s graphic design. These shirts aren’t really vintage; they’re just made to look that way.
3. And, in a class all our own, Destee-Nation. Our vintage t-shirts feature establishments from up and down the West Coast and in Hawaii. We started out characterizing a t-shirt as vintage if it met one of the following criteria:

• The place it represents has been around for a long time. Many of our member businesses have been selling their t-shirts since the middle of the last century.
• The represented business is a historic monument or landmark of some kind.

Recently, in our attempt to play fair with the shops that don’t have authentic vintage shirts, we decided to add our t-shirts with vintage styling to our featured list of vintage tees.

So check them out and, if you’re so inclined, let us know what you think about the term vintage.