Here's Part 2 of 3 of the interview with Jon Kraus '04 about his Bleeding Hearts Club progressive t-shirt business, in which he describes the influences of other t-shirt types on his own company, as well as offering up his thoughts on Wesleyan. If you need to catch up, here's a link to Part 1.


Jon Kraus: I had an epiphany one day, in which I felt like printed message T-shirts could go one of two ways. You've got political T's, which are really blunt, in-your-face stuff. You know, "Cheney's Got a Gun", a picture of Bush titled "War Criminal", etc etc. Then there's this whole culture of abstract, random T-shirts. Shirts that can have really beautiful images, but they don't say anything – a lot of graffiti, collage, or sketch style artwork.

The Cynical Romantic: Yeah, I saw a guy selling some of those once in SoHo.

Oh and one other branch would be my personal pet peeve, the "college humor" shirts – all those shirts with an image and some lame punchline – to categorize, I’m talking about all the shirts they sell at a place like Urban Outfitters. (I hope that's not your favorite store or something)

No.

…the shirts that are deliberately "aged"…and another example would be the "Jesus is My Homeboy" shirt…or all the shirts that just take quotes from Will Ferrell movies like Old School. Just for the record, don't get me wrong, I love me some Will Ferrell movies.

Me too (sometimes). But back to your business?

"Good Evening, I'm Ron Burgundy"...... ok, ok so basically my feeling was that if you're wearing a T-shirt with some message or design, why not it be an expression that you want to actually express.

Good point.

Not just some sound bite that you hear on TV every day. Something that has meaning, poignancy, humor, whatever. Something that has vitality and truth.

I’m beginning to think I’ll be able to get my entire interview out of that first question...

Haha, you know as soon as you asked “How did you first get the idea for the t-shirt business,” I thought the same thing......so anyway, I thought about a combination of the earnest, political message T's, and the random humor would be ideal. A message that's visually compelling, thought-provoking, controversial, but is actually an expression of one's individuality. And that wearing it actually expresses that individuality, and not the nonconformist conformity that many shirts offer.

Ah, noncomformist conformity - that's what I often joke Wesleyan is all about.

Yeah, for certain. I mean, when a subculture elsewhere is mainstream at Wesleyan, that's counterintuitive.

The conservatives are in the closet, etc., etc. I think ideally, nothing would be mainstream at Wesleyan. But now I digress.

Yeah, that's one ironic aspect....but if you can slip through the culture being flipped, you come out a subculture of a subculture. So you're that much more on the cutting edge, in theory. Haha, I don't know if that even made sense to me

Good, we're on the same page then.

Ok, so back to the ideas. I had the overarching concept wayyyyyy before I had the ideas – specific designs, that is.

One quick question...how can your shirts be as individual as you say unless you never repeat the same slogan twice?

I thought that might come up. Well it's not the matter of the expression or slogan not being repeated. It's more that the messages actually say something, whether verbally or visually or both. So if 100 million people all of a sudden wore T-shirts that said "Impeach Bush" that's conformity. But it's not complacency. It's saying something real and raw. And as for another example of a widespread design that says something real, there's stuff like the original "No Nukes" image from the late 70's.

Come back in a few days for Part 3, where Jon gives detailed explanations of a few of his designs, offers up some final thoughts, and asks for your participation.

For more information, visit his website or join his facebook group.