Screen Printing: It's Time to Stop

Sometime, perhaps around 2000, things started to get screen-printed a lot. Back then, it seemed pretty avant-garde to screen print something off-center, or in the bottom right corner of a t-shirt, or to promote your band, or whatever. Plus, as we all know, it's ever so D.I.Y. and not that hard and all, so everyone seemed to be doing it. Even fashion designers got in it, with brands like Libertine silk-screening some skulls on an ugly blazer and getting people to pay $600 for it. And, of course, it's all trickled down to the mass market, with t-shirts sold at Old Navy and the like with off-center graphics.

Well I say, no more! Screen printing can be fabulous, and it can be used to make one's own unique fabric or design, but more often that not, it truly is just some ugly graphic slapped onto something else, with the added bonus of an inflated price tag. In the case above, it is some indie "designer" screen-printing guns on an ugly yellow 80's dress, and a slightly less ugly late 60's dress, both os which were probably purchased at Goodwill for $4. I can't imagine how much they're charging, but I'll tell you right now: it's not worth it. Gun imagery is mostly ugly and totally played out anyway, and it takes very little skill to repeatedly screen stuff with the same image- a lot less than it would, to say, embroider on the same dress.