Find your new favorite T-shirt at The Academy
By Ellen Griley

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

I have this friend who doesn’t wear T-shirts—or rather, he doesn’t wear new T-shirts. Occasionally he’ll throw on an old vintage tee, but give him a new shirt—even if it’s, say, from a friend’s band—and chances are he’ll throw it out. The reason? “Anybody can make a T-shirt.”

If that seems high-brow or just plain silly (it is) at least let me clarify what my friend means to say: these days, anybody can design a T-shirt. Look no further than Threadless.com, where more than 300,000 members vote every week on 600-plus T-shirt submissions, of which five to six are then printed by Threadless and made available for purchase through the website. The winning designers receive $2,000 and their name printed on the shirt labels—click, submit, ta-da! Johnny’s now an artist.
It’s done for fashion design what iPods did for deejaying: everyone’s a DJ, and everyone’s got a clothing label, too, and these aren’t even just the people submitting their stuff to Threadless—who needs a website to do your work when you’ve got a silkscreen kit and a 12-pack of Red Stripe?

I’m guilty of this as well (all of it: the deejaying, the silk screening), but maybe that’s why I still wear T-shirts—why I don’t view them as devoid of any measurable quality. Making an art form available to the (untrained, possibly unskilled) masses does not guarantee that all the talent will evaporate. Which is where a retail store like The Academy comes in: fostering that talent—which is pretty much all around us—and providing a place to buy a piece of it.

Located in the East Village Arts District, The Academy carries some big-name labels (Paul Frank, American Apparel) but stands out with its own designs and a selection of ones from Threadless. These are the best of the best—consider “Pure Imagination,” designed by Steven Lefcourt. Printed on top of a Kelly Green tee is a colorful jungle roamed by a sky blue elephant, an orange fox and a muted yellow camel, plus a goose and a moose and a rooster, and also an alligator, snake and a deer. Only it takes a second to see all that, because in place of each animal’s head is a child’s shadow puppet version of it. It’s equal parts childish whimsy and borderline frightening psychedelia, which is probably why the store has sold out of its adult sizes.

It used to be that The Academy was the best of my “secret shops”—I knew I could always find that perfect, last-minute handmade or one-of-a-kind gift there, and that the reaction would always be the same: “Tell me where you got this!” And the coolest stuff was always from The Academy’s own line: a bright yellow tee with cerulean blue deer screened all over it, a pink tote with a woman chasing a man with a knife screened in black on both sides.

Not that the store doesn’t carry things like those any more—it does; a cool, screened, gold-on-black Ronald McDonald tee is available now—but those pieces were designed by The Academy’s previous owners. Since around January, the store has been under the ownership of the Samreth siblings—older brother Bonal handles the business, sister Paunie does PR, Vizal is the creative director, and little brother Albert works the store’s parties as a DJ. There are plans to roll out some new designs very soon, says Vizal, who doubles as a product designer, and eventually he would like to release ten designs per month.

We’ll have to wait and see if this new Academy line can match the fun, off-beat designs offered in the past, but in the meantime, the store remains a great place to shop: I picked up a cute, hand-stitched purse designed by Nikles there last week, and there are a few Paul Frank tees I’m sure I’ll cruise by for soon.

Who knows? I might even give one to my friend.

THE ACADEMY | 433 E FIRST ST | LONG BEACH 90802