16 January 2009

Shirty

Two young entrepreneurs support young artists with their t-shirt concept store.

T-shirts are no longer just something to wear. Long gone are the days when a ‘Hang Ten’ logo the word ‘Hypercolour’ were all you needed to look cool. T-shirts today say something about the wearer.

This is a fact that designer Oliver Tilsley and fellow company Director Andrea Vidal are exploiting with their T-bar concept store.

Stocking hundreds of men’s and women’s t-shirt designs from local and international emerging designers and artists, in three years T-bar has already expanded to four retail outlets – three in Melbourne and one in Sydney.

Both Tilsley and Vidal studied an ‘Entrepreneurship’ at the RMIT and have a wealth of knowledge in fashion retail.

“It’s completely exhausting, challenging, but above all else, extremely rewarding. Fashion is a fast-paced, extremely exciting environment to work in, which keeps me on my toes,” Tilsley says.

T-bar offers what they call the “14-day initiative” profiling work from a new artist every two weeks. All the store’s designs are limited edition and “built for youth, by youth”.

“We wanted to create a business that forged a genuine and enduring connection between itself and our target market – the youth,” Vidal says.

The T-bar stores have some pretty fantastic and unique designs, so while we might mourn the loss of our ‘Hypercolour’ innocence (despite it’s recent resurgence) it’s good to see the humble tee is still out in force.

T-bar 03 9417 6500