Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

POLITICAL STYLE
John Kerry is a rock star
BY CAMILLE DODERO

Presidential-election T-shirts tend to be dumb and ugly. Especially in 2004, with all the crass connotations of our current president’s cognomen: most left-leaning jerseys either stoop to bawdy bikini-line jokes (PLUCK BUSH), transpose George W. Bush’s visage into a mock product advertisement (a faux Spam logo with the prez’s face above the word SCAM), or mutate Bush into an unattractive, ghoulish villain. All fine for goofy novelty items, but not the sort of clothes anyone with even a modicum of style would actually buy.

But Elizabeth Shapiro, a 23-year-old Yale grad originally from Chelsea, wanted to make pro-Kerry T-shirts that cool kids might actually wear. "The days of boring, boxy political shirts are through," she says over the phone from her Brooklyn residence. "Those big, square T-shirts all kind of look Republican anyway."

So Shapiro founded Politipunk, a small company selling pro-Kerry merch that’s modeled after vintage styles, with three graphic designers who didn’t have any clothing experience but "knew what’s cool." They came up with hipster-chic spoofs on the John Deere trucker hat (a green hat with a yellow running donkey above the name John Kerry) and the Care Bears logo (the phrase KERRY BEARS beneath a cartoon-y White House floating on a puffy cloud). But they also conceived the absurdly amusing JOHN KERRY IS A ROCKSTAR — an orange T-shirt printed with a high-contrast image of the suited senator raising his right fist and sporting bug-eyed, Bono-style shades. Although Politipunk does have one tasteless hair-related slogan in its online catalogue (BUSH JUST GETS IN THE WAY), the company is more pro than anti. "We wanted to spread this idea that it’s cool to be for someone — even to be unabashedly for someone."

In its first month of business, Politipunk recouped its initial $11,000 investment. More than likely, sales have been helped by Natalie Portman, who appeared on MTV, Entertainment Tonight, and Good Morning America in a Politipunk girlie T during the DNC. Specifically, Portman wore the company’s Kerry-cast-as-comely-heartthrob design: a silhouette taken from George Butler’s famous photo of the fur-collared veteran, surrounded by pink, yellow, and purple hearts. Apparently, Michael Stipe’s been spotted wearing that one too.

"I wanted to do something that was gonna make Kerry look sexy and look presidential," says Shapiro. "People weren’t seeing him that way." Back in the day, she thinks, John Kerry was a pretty handsome young gent, especially in Butler’s inescapable picture: that thick lock of wavy hair, that contemplative gaze, that giant unibrow. "Clinton got a lot of props for being seen as sexy. But I think [Kerry’s] got it. I just sort of wanted to help other people see it," Shapiro coos. "Kerry was so hot in the ’70s."

Politipunk T-shirts are available at Pluto (215 Elm Street, David Square, Somerville, 617-666-2005; 603 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, 617-522-0054) and Motley (623 Tremont Street, Boston, 617-620-2587). Visit politipunk.com.


Issue Date: August 27 - September 2, 2004
Back to the News & Features table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group