MY FAVOURITE SHIRTS

MY FAVOURITE SHIRTS

INTRODUCTION
In over 20 years of making badges I've
continually experimented and made just
about every imaginable type of thin,
flexible material into badges, including
microfiche film, sheets of Letraset,
sweet wrappers, cassette tape, nori
seaweed and human hair.
The first fabric badges I made, in
the early 1990s, were a set of seven
made from a beautiful vintage 60s
american shirt.
In 2005 after lots of trial and error,
I developed a method of making fabric
into button badges without the usual
plastic covering.(1) The extra effort
was worth it, the badgemaking process
pulls fabric tightly around the metal
backing, producing highly tactile
badges - more like items of jewellery
than traditional badges.
A pile of old shirts had gradually
accumulated in the bottom of my wardrobe,
worn out,with missing buttons, frayed
cuffs and grubby collars. I decided
to reuse this material,and produced a
set of My Favourite Shirt badges
which came packaged with a woven
nametape and explanation of the
source material.
When discussing this project with friends,
a couple said 'I've got an old shirt which
would be perfect for that!' So responding
to these comments I came up with the idea
of making a guest series of my favourite
shirt badges. In 2009 I invited friends,
colleagues and co-conspirators to donate
a shirt and write a few lines about its
history or associated memories, fifteen
of them generously contributed
It's been fascinating to see this project
grow and evolve and I'm very pleased to
present the shirts and their stories in
this special guest edition of my
favourite shirt.
MARK PAWSON

Quinnell Family Heirloom Shirt.

My dad bought this shirt when he visited
Italy as a teenager - probably 1958. He
wore it at university, driving a scooter and
playing in Jazz Bands.
He passed it on to me when I was 16
and I too have had a lot of wear out of it.
I have no son to pass it down to, so I'm
donating it to M. Pawson's Favourite Shirt
Project.

Peter Quinnell, Illustrator.

Now about the shirt, This shirt was
given to me by a friend who worked at
Wormwood Scrubs.(2) I have worn it con-
stantly for at least 12 years. I have since
acquired two more prison shirts but this
was my original. It has served me very
well. The colour only really started to fade
in the last couple of years and best of all,
it never needed ironing.

Rich Roberts, Visual Effects Artist.

Shopping for clothes is something that I
have never really enjoyed. To me it has all
the qualities of a chore, something to be
avoided if possible. As a child I recall
the anxiety of trying to find something I
liked that avoided being seen as 'not
sensible' by my mother. The difficulty in
choosing clothes does not mean I lacked
interest in them.
As a small boy I remember going to a party
wearing a white shirt with a bright red
tie and polished shoes. This had a
profound effect on my ego.
By my teenage years I had become a
'cultivated' scruff. One of my reports from
boarding school at the time read: 'Leslie is
the untidiest boy in the school. He really
must do something about his personal
appearance.'
I was well into my thirties before I over-
came my phobia of suits and smart clothing
in general, prefering cheap casual clothes
that I did not have to worry about if they
got messed up.
For most of my adult life the better part
of my wardrobe has come from charity
shops. Discovering garments, particularly
shirts that I could never come across in a
high street gents outfitters provides a
similar pleasure to the experience when in a
secondhand bookshop and unearthing an
unexpected book.
The shirt I have chosen is French, made
by agnes b. homme of Paris and, I suspect,
the only French shirt I have ever owned. As
well as the painterly fabric print I also liked
the feel of the thin material and the way the
black buttons became lost against their
background.
I bought it for Ł4.00, more than I normally
paid for shirts at the time, from a charity
shop on Fulham Road.

Les Coleman, Artist/Writer.

I got this shirt at a free stuff party in
Bethnal Green 3/4 years ago.(3) I made some
iron-on transfers which slowly came off in
the wash but a few shadows remain, one of
which reads 'Bernie Mac for President',
Bernie is no longer with us so that will
never happen.(4)
I really only wore this shirt to Northern
Soul events in London, it was light & loose
and felt good to dance in. We had a
good few times together I'm going to miss you
old friend!!!

Rob Ryan, Artist.

That shirt belonged to my father who
died in 2008.

It's a really nice french-made shirt, I
have had it for ten years, unfortunately
the buttons were being lost (I took the
rest of them off)

My dad would be real happy to know
his shirt will be turned into Art.

So am I.

Arnaud Desjardin, Book Dealer. This is one of my favourite shirts but it
is finally wearing out, so it's nice to be
donating it to a good cause. I bought the
shirt in a charity shop in Sherwood,
Nottingham. When I brought it home to
show my 'stylist', Leigh Milsom she
screwed her face up in disgust! But when
I put it on we both agreed that it was an
instant hit, It lasted all through
university and a good three years after.

Paul Sammut,
Key Accounts Sales Executive.

Unfortunately I chucked out my all-time
-fave stripey beach shirt just prior to
receiving your notice, so what I've
sent is really my oldest shirt.
This was purchased from Afflecks Palace
in the summer of 1988, as a treat to
myself after having finished my final
exams at North Cheshire College,
Warrington.
I suppose I should have waited for the
results of those exams before rewarding
myself with clothes.
This shirt was brand new and one of a
small batch of identical designs in the
unit where I bought it. However, having
previously bought second-hand one-offs,
once I'd bought the shirt for about Ł20
- I was paranoid about spotting someone
else wearing the same when I was out on
the town. I did spot another chap wearing
one the same night as me, in a basement
bar in Manchester but the place was
crowded and the lights were low, so I
think our fashion duplication went
unnoticed.

Ian Lowey, Journalist.

The shirt was bought when I was 14 - it
was my first purchase from Leeds' retro
stores and I was delighted to have finally
entered the world of the Britpop fans'
clothes. Now I could wear it to Echobelly
gigs with pride. My Mum wasn't very
impressed with it at the time, preferring I
buy clothes new, but it's stood the test of
time and I'll always be grateful it saw me
through Britpop's fall and the closure of
The Duchess in Leeds.
Now I'm 29 and it's finally time to say
goodbye. Thanks old friend, I couldn't have
danced to Menswear without you.

Charlie Phillips, Film Festival Organiser.

Here is my Shirt for your project, I
intended to mail an old shirt with strips of
'Tarzan' comics printed in the fabric but I
could not find it anymore (maybe my
wife threw it away), so I opted for this old one
that I remember buying because the floral
motif looks like small 'paisley' designs.(5)
I think they are the perfect size for small
badges, so I hope you can use it - file
under; mild (fake) Psychedelia.

Vittore Baroni, Music Journalist. Saw you at Bev + RR's evening last
week + reminded me to dig out my
old favourite shirt. It's not the
one I was looking for which by now
I guess has gone to the bicycle
maintenence rag dept.
This is another old favourite,
which I bought 2nd hand 10-15
years ago, it always fitted me
really well. A particularly fine
gingham + really good collar
shape + size.

Michael Marriott, Designer.

I sent a spotty shirt off to you yesterday.
The story is:-
It wasn't from Johnsons on the Kings
Road at all (an earlier red brick shirt
memory?) This was a Paul Smith sale
probably from the sample shop.
In the Seventies when I was living in
a van for about 2 years, I was cutting
down on excess stuff. So black was an easy
clothing colour to not show dirt and
match almost any occasion and look
vaguely bohemian. But, finding only black too
serious, and being a bit of a Syndicalist I
wanted to add a dash of red. So I found if I
bought just red and black clothes they'd
always match (I had been a mod after all
and such things mattered still.) in whatever
combinations. So this shirt was perfect altho
I think the neck size was always a bit on the
small size. Still I wore it enough to wear
one sleeve threadbare.
The black and red theme was hard to
stick with over years, so now I still wear a
lot of black but with all kinds of colours as
well as red.
So badges should catch an edge of the
black blotches. I feel this shirt is a real part
of me and who I am/was.

Stefan Szczelkun, Artist.

This brown shirt was one that Stephen
Fowler was throwing away ages ago and I
liked the look of it so I got it. It was quite
worn already but I thought it had a kind of
scruffy glamour to it as its a 70s shirt and it
not only has the nice muted colour but also
a bit of texture to it as well.
Its obviously got quite a lot of nylon in it
but its still comfortable and feels smooth
and cool on a hot day. The cuffs and collar
are reassuringly substantial and turn up and
down in a satisfying way but they are not
too big or a weird shape like some 70s shirts. The slightly sad thing about this shirt is
that as it was old when I got it the collar and
cuffs soon became frayed and separated out
into odd layers showing the card stiffening
inside, when that first happened I was not a
family man and much younger so it seemed
cool to wander out in this scruffy shirt that
had seen better days.
Recently I have seen it in my wardrobe
and wanted to wear it but thought no, people
will think I am a sad mentalist.
So it had to go.

Zeel, Illustrator.

A brown Hawaiian shirt.
Bought in a charity shop, Tucson Arizona.
Worn in London 1994 - 1999.
Booze. flashing lights.
Late nights.
A smell of smoke.
Dancing.
More dancing.
I never made it to Hawaii...

Mikey Tomkins, Professional Beekeeper.

EDITORS NOTES
Most of the fabric images have been reduced
to give a full view of the pattern.
1. Lapel badges, with printed images or text were
invented in the 1890s, developed from the fabric
covered buttons then used on clothing.
2. For more about stripes and criminals see
'The Devil's Cloth.'
3. I acquired this shirt from an earlier Free Stuff
Party, wore it for a couple of years, then took it
to the Free Stuff Party where Rob found it.
4. Bernie Mac, US Actor & Comedian 1957-2008.
5. This type of pattern with an abstracted small
floral motif repeated on a plain background is
a variation of Paisley known as Buti.
6. About 5 years ago I ran in to Stephen at a
event at the V&A Museum - and we were both
wearing the same shirt this one! It's a
classic Liberty print named Edenham. FURTHER READING
The Official Badge Collectors Guide, Frank R.
Setchfield, Longman, Essex 1986.

Badges, Philip Attwood, The British Museum
Press, London 2004.

The Devil's Cloth, Michel Pastoreau, Columbia
University Press, New York, 2001.

Eulogy - Favorite Clothes Who Died in France,
Erica Van Horn, Handmade Fabric Book, 1983.

Textile Designs, Susan Meller & Joost Elffers,
Thames & Hudson, 2002.

BADGES
For this series of badges I invited friends and colleagues to contribute a much loved, worn-to-death
shirt to be comemmorated and preserved by being transformed into badges. Fifteen people
generously donated their old shirts, which included prized purchases, charity shop finds and family
heirlooms. Each MY FAVOURITE SHIRT badge pack also comes with a shirt-pocket sized booklet
which tells the stories of the shirts and explains the development of this unique project.
Small - 25mm Badges, available in a Limited Edition of 99 packs
BIG - 38mm Badges, Limited Edition of 30 packs - very few left!

Price with postage

Price with postage


INTRODUCTION In over 20 years of making badges I've continually experimented and made just about every imaginable type of thin, flexible material into badges, including microfiche film, sheets of Letraset, sweet wrappers, cassette tape, nori seaweed and human hair. The first fabric badges I made, in the early 1990s, were a set of seven made from a beautiful vintage 60s american shirt. In 2005 after lots of trial and error, I developed a method of making fabric into button badges without the usual	plastic covering.(1) The extra effort was worth it, the badgemaking process pulls fabric tightly around the metal backing, producing highly tactile badges - more like items of jewellery than traditional badges. A pile of old shirts had gradually accumulated in the bottom of my wardrobe, worn out,with missing buttons, frayed cuffs and grubby collars. I decided to reuse this material,and produced a set of My Favourite Shirt badges which came packaged with a woven nametape and explanation of the source material.	When discussing this project with friends, a couple said 'I've got an old shirt which would be perfect for that!' So responding to these comments I came up with the idea of making a guest series of my favourite shirt badges. In 2009 I invited friends, colleagues and co-conspirators to donate a shirt and write a few lines about its history or associated memories, fifteen of them generously contributed It's been fascinating to see this project grow and evolve and I'm very pleased to present the shirts and their stories in this special guest edition of my favourite shirt. MARK PAWSON
		Quinnell Family Heirloom Shirt. My dad bought this shirt when he visited Italy as a teenager - probably 1958. He wore it at university, driving a scooter and playing in Jazz Bands. He passed it on to me when I was 16 and I too have had a lot of wear out of it. I have no son to pass it down to, so I'm donating it to M. Pawson's Favourite Shirt Project. Peter Quinnell, Illustrator.
	Now about the shirt, This shirt was given to me by a friend who worked at Wormwood Scrubs.(2) I have worn it con- stantly for at least 12 years. I have since acquired two more prison shirts but this was my original. It has served me very well. The colour only really started to fade in the last couple of years and best of all, it never needed ironing. Rich Roberts, Visual Effects Artist.
Shopping for clothes is something that I have never really enjoyed. To me it has all the qualities of a chore, something to be avoided if possible. As a child I recall the anxiety of trying to find something I liked that avoided being seen as 'not sensible' by my mother. The difficulty in choosing clothes does not mean I lacked interest in them. As a small boy I remember going to a party wearing a white shirt with a bright red tie and polished shoes. This had a profound effect on my ego. By my teenage years I had become a 'cultivated' scruff. One of my reports from	boarding school at the time read: 'Leslie is the untidiest boy in the school. He really must do something about his personal appearance.' I was well into my thirties before I over- came my phobia of suits and smart clothing in general, prefering cheap casual clothes that I did not have to worry about if they got messed up. For most of my adult life the better part of my wardrobe has come from charity shops. Discovering garments, particularly shirts that I could never come across in a high street gents outfitters provides a	similar pleasure to the experience when in a secondhand bookshop and unearthing an unexpected book. The shirt I have chosen is French, made by agnes b. homme of Paris and, I suspect, the only French shirt I have ever owned. As well as the painterly fabric print I also liked the feel of the thin material and the way the black buttons became lost against their background. I bought it for Ł4.00, more than I normally paid for shirts at the time, from a charity shop on Fulham Road. Les Coleman, Artist/Writer.
	I got this shirt at a free stuff party in Bethnal Green 3/4 years ago.(3) I made some iron-on transfers which slowly came off in the wash but a few shadows remain, one of which reads 'Bernie Mac for President', Bernie is no longer with us so that will never happen.(4) I really only wore this shirt to Northern Soul events in London, it was light & loose and felt good to dance in. We had a good few times together I'm going to miss you old friend!!! Rob Ryan, Artist.
That shirt belonged to my father who died in 2008. It's a really nice french-made shirt, I have had it for ten years, unfortunately the buttons were being lost (I took the rest of them off) My dad would be real happy to know his shirt will be turned into Art. So am I. Arnaud Desjardin, Book Dealer.		This is one of my favourite shirts but it is finally wearing out, so it's nice to be donating it to a good cause. I bought the shirt in a charity shop in Sherwood, Nottingham. When I brought it home to show my 'stylist', Leigh Milsom she screwed her face up in disgust! But when I put it on we both agreed that it was an instant hit, It lasted all through university and a good three years after. Paul Sammut, Key Accounts Sales Executive.
	Unfortunately I chucked out my all-time -fave stripey beach shirt just prior to receiving your notice, so what I've sent is really my oldest shirt. This was purchased from Afflecks Palace in the summer of 1988, as a treat to myself after having finished my final exams at North Cheshire College, Warrington. I suppose I should have waited for the results of those exams before rewarding myself with clothes. This shirt was brand new and one of a small batch of identical designs in the	unit where I bought it. However, having previously bought second-hand one-offs, once I'd bought the shirt for about Ł20 - I was paranoid about spotting someone else wearing the same when I was out on the town. I did spot another chap wearing one the same night as me, in a basement bar in Manchester but the place was crowded and the lights were low, so I think our fashion duplication went unnoticed. Ian Lowey, Journalist.
	The shirt was bought when I was 14 - it was my first purchase from Leeds' retro stores and I was delighted to have finally entered the world of the Britpop fans' clothes. Now I could wear it to Echobelly gigs with pride. My Mum wasn't very impressed with it at the time, preferring I buy clothes new, but it's stood the test of time and I'll always be grateful it saw me through Britpop's fall and the closure of The Duchess in Leeds. Now I'm 29 and it's finally time to say goodbye. Thanks old friend, I couldn't have danced to Menswear without you. Charlie Phillips, Film Festival Organiser.
Here is my Shirt for your project, I intended to mail an old shirt with strips of 'Tarzan' comics printed in the fabric but I could not find it anymore (maybe my wife threw it away), so I opted for this old one that I remember buying because the floral motif looks like small 'paisley' designs.(5) I think they are the perfect size for small badges, so I hope you can use it - file under; mild (fake) Psychedelia. Vittore Baroni, Music Journalist.		Saw you at Bev + RR's evening last week + reminded me to dig out my old favourite shirt. It's not the one I was looking for which by now I guess has gone to the bicycle maintenence rag dept. This is another old favourite, which I bought 2nd hand 10-15 years ago, it always fitted me really well. A particularly fine gingham + really good collar shape + size. Michael Marriott, Designer.
	I sent a spotty shirt off to you yesterday. The story is:- It wasn't from Johnsons on the Kings Road at all (an earlier red brick shirt memory?) This was a Paul Smith sale probably from the sample shop. In the Seventies when I was living in a van for about 2 years, I was cutting down on excess stuff. So black was an easy clothing colour to not show dirt and match almost any occasion and look vaguely bohemian. But, finding only black too serious, and being a bit of a Syndicalist I wanted to add a dash of red. So I found if I bought just red and black clothes they'd	always match (I had been a mod after all and such things mattered still.) in whatever combinations. So this shirt was perfect altho I think the neck size was always a bit on the small size. Still I wore it enough to wear one sleeve threadbare. The black and red theme was hard to stick with over years, so now I still wear a lot of black but with all kinds of colours as well as red. So badges should catch an edge of the black blotches. I feel this shirt is a real part of me and who I am/was. Stefan Szczelkun, Artist.
This brown shirt was one that Stephen Fowler was throwing away ages ago and I liked the look of it so I got it. It was quite worn already but I thought it had a kind of scruffy glamour to it as its a 70s shirt and it not only has the nice muted colour but also a bit of texture to it as well. Its obviously got quite a lot of nylon in it but its still comfortable and feels smooth and cool on a hot day. The cuffs and collar are reassuringly substantial and turn up and down in a satisfying way but they are not too big or a weird shape like some 70s shirts.	The slightly sad thing about this shirt is that as it was old when I got it the collar and cuffs soon became frayed and separated out into odd layers showing the card stiffening inside, when that first happened I was not a family man and much younger so it seemed cool to wander out in this scruffy shirt that had seen better days. Recently I have seen it in my wardrobe and wanted to wear it but thought no, people will think I am a sad mentalist. So it had to go. Zeel, Illustrator.
	A brown Hawaiian shirt. Bought in a charity shop, Tucson Arizona. Worn in London 1994 - 1999. Booze. flashing lights. Late nights. A smell of smoke. Dancing. More dancing. I never made it to Hawaii... Mikey Tomkins, Professional Beekeeper.
EDITORS NOTES Most of the fabric images have been reduced to give a full view of the pattern. 1. Lapel badges, with printed images or text were invented in the 1890s, developed from the fabric covered buttons then used on clothing. 2. For more about stripes and criminals see 'The Devil's Cloth.' 3. I acquired this shirt from an earlier Free Stuff Party, wore it for a couple of years, then took it to the Free Stuff Party where Rob found it.	4. Bernie Mac, US Actor & Comedian 1957-2008. 5. This type of pattern with an abstracted small floral motif repeated on a plain background is a variation of Paisley known as Buti. 6. About 5 years ago I ran in to Stephen at a event at the V&A Museum - and we were both wearing the same shirt this one! It's a classic Liberty print named Edenham.	FURTHER READING The Official Badge Collectors Guide, Frank R. Setchfield, Longman, Essex 1986. Badges, Philip Attwood, The British Museum Press, London 2004. The Devil's Cloth, Michel Pastoreau, Columbia University Press, New York, 2001. Eulogy - Favorite Clothes Who Died in France, Erica Van Horn, Handmade Fabric Book, 1983. Textile Designs, Susan Meller & Joost Elffers, Thames & Hudson, 2002.