MINNEAPOLIS - The messages are strong and sometimes funny. One is feisty, another is in French. But always, they're wearable. <\/p>\n
\"Matriarch\" <\/p>\n
\"She persisted\" <\/p>\n
\"Anarchy is female\" <\/p>\n
\"Solidarite feminine\" <\/p>\n
\"Feminism: Back by popular demand\" <\/p>\n
The feminist T-shirt is having a moment. Fueled by people who want to express their support for women's rights at marches - but also at work, out for dinner, on Instagram - the shirts are growing in popularity and power. Sure, luxury brand Dior is selling a $700 feminist tee, but the trend is rooted in a $30 unisex shirt from the Los Angeles shop Otherwild. \"The Future Is Female,\" the shirt declares. <\/p>\n
Minnesota artists and designers are creating some of the more popular designs, using the T-shirts to raise money for nonprofits focused on women's health and equality. They're also gathering around the messages, hosting printing workshops and discussions. <\/p>\n
\"I think this activism zeitgeist just overlapped with a renewed interest in graphic tees as a medium for artists and designers,\" said Minneapolis designer Maddy Nye. \"Of course it's only a T-shirt, but it's contributing to a larger paradigm shift in awareness and action.\" <\/p>\n
Protest art and imagery hangs from the walls of Nye's sunny home studio. For her \"Matriarch\" shirt, Nye used a bulbous typeface that \"had its heyday during the environmental and women's movements in the 1970s,\" she said, \"but I like to use it in a contemporary context.\" <\/p>\n
So with just one word, the design asks questions about what's changed since then - and what hasn't. Some people have bought Nye's tees for their mothers, women who fought earlier battles. <\/p>\n
Angie Toner is not shy about being a feminist. But working in the beauty industry a few years back, she had conversation after conversation with women who eschewed that label. It got her thinking about the backlash against the word, the movement. Then she came across a photograph of a woman holding a sign: \"Feminism: Back by popular demand.\" <\/p>\n
\"I need a sign like that,\" she decided, if only to hang on her wall. <\/p>\n
Toner asked local sign painter Phil Vandervaart to draw the design. <\/p>\n
\"The drawing was so great,\" she said, \"that I was like, you know what? I'd like to move this around.\" <\/p>\n
So she printed it onto T-shirts and bags at Gee Teez, a screen printing shop in south Minneapolis, and put them on Etsy in 2015: \"A Grassroots Feminist Fashion Action,\" she calls it. Orders poured in. Since then, Toner has tried to quit the project a few times, to move on to new things. <\/p>\n
\"But I've kept it going because anytime I try to let it fade out, someone will reach out,\" she said. <\/p>\n
The day after President Donald Trump was elected, Toner gave the shirts away on the street. Orders again filled her inbox. <\/p>\n
Politics and protests are inspiring big retailers to print \"Feminist\" on cheap totes and plastic jewelry. But it's also fueling local artists and small companies' longer-standing projects. My Sister, a Minneapolis-based company that uses \"sweatshop-free\" clothing to help fight sex trafficking, has been around for two years, raising $93,000 over that time. <\/p>\n
Beyond the money, the messages themselves tackle gender inequality, one of trafficking's \"root causes,\" said Mandy Multerer, the company's co-founder and CEO. \"Stop Traffick\" is the benefit corporation's best seller, she said, but in recent months, a tank is trending. <\/p>\n
\"It's my body,\" the shirt reads on one side, outlining the shape of a breast. \"It's my choice.\" <\/p>\n
\"I think women feel strong when they wear it,\" Multerer said. <\/p>\n
The image came to Crystal Quinn one night as she was falling asleep. <\/p>\n
The Minneapolis-based artist had been reading \"The Dispossessed,\" a 1974 science-fiction novel by Ursula Le Guin, turning over one of its ideas in her head: Because our culture is a patriarchy, run by men, then the opposition, inherently, must be female. <\/p>\n
That night, the idea merged with a classic protest sign: the abortion-rights slogan \"Keep Abortion Legal,\" in bold typeface, within a circle. <\/p>\n
\"I just put those two together in a very natural way,\" Quinn said. <\/p>\n
She got out of bed and started drawing. The result: \"Anarchy is female,\" in '70s script, pushing up against the black circle containing it. <\/p>\n
\"Putting it on T-shirts was the first thought I had,\" said Quinn, partly because she appreciates how, like those sold at concerts, they reference a specific moment. <\/p>\n
The design has since landed on mugs, buttons and, as women marched after the election, protest signs. In January, Quinn co-hosted a workshop for protesters to print the image. <\/p>\n
\"When I came up with the design, it had nothing to do with politics, at all, or Hillary Clinton,\" said Quinn, a multidisciplinary artist who has designed and made shoes, pompoms and posters. <\/p>\n
But she has loved seeing how and where it's popped up - the conversations it has started. \"People have used it in so many different ways,\" she said, \"and it's all correct.\" <\/p>\n
While some sketched their designs long before last year's election, others were spurred by it: A peach T-shirt for sale at Mille, a stunning south Minneapolis boutique with a national online following, grew out of a postelection conversation between owner Michelle LeBlanc and designer Nye. <\/p>\n
\"After the election, we were kind of devastated,\" LeBlanc said. \"What can we do to be more active? What can we do to give back more?\" <\/p>\n
Half the proceeds from the \"Solidarite feminine\" shirt, which translates to \"women solidarity,\" goes to Planned Parenthood. Already, the shop has donated $2,000 to the health care nonprofit. Money from a second T-shirt - which quotes Michelle Obama's \"Go high\" in bubbly typeface - goes to DonorsChoose, a nonprofit that allows donors to pick projects in public schools. <\/p>\n
\"Sometimes the kids write thank-you notes,\" said LeBlanc, whose shop focuses on female designers. <\/p>\n
Whenever the women at the shop are feeling down, they pull them out, she said. \"Oh, let's read through our letters.\" <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Minnesota designers fueling feminist T-shirt craze - Reading Eagle<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MINNEAPOLIS - The messages are strong and sometimes funny. One is feisty, another is in French. But always, they're wearable Continue reading