If you’ve ever visited Tokyo, you’ve most likely breezed through Beams T’s original storefront in Harajuku’s shopping district or the newer, recommended one outside Daikanyama Station. With its signature mobile-laundry-line display running the uber-latest T-shirts designed by 2K, Stacks, Unnon and tens of others on any given week, Beams Boutique is no BAPE wonderland per se, but it’s a must to witness Japan’s elevation of the most basic T-shirt designs to a Scientology-crazy pedestal of SHRN!

This high-profile soft-back from Harper Collins compiles 300 selected graphics from Beams T, categorized in design-zen-porn sections like Discord, Dream and Animal. Personally I’d rather see a book that visits the working spaces/homes where complimentary copies of T-Shirt Factory have been sent out (excluding mine), but voyeurism aside, this dust-catcher is good for yuks, eye rolls (the non-altered kind), and awes (a few, but no awws, unfortunately). It’s a good alternative to eighty foot-taps of boredom and it’s documenting the choice output of the Beams T company, so you can’t rip it for being what it is, Plato haters.

That said, I don’t know anyone who wears this stuff on the reg, or even has more than two 2K shirts, unless they bought ‘em in 2002 via TheGiantPeach.com (still open, wowzers), or a lone “I’m Rocking on Your Dime” McFetridge in their closet (it’s in the book), where it’ll be staying for at least a hazy day, five years or until a compulsory Goodwill delivery. McFetridge delivers fully on the crisp, monochromatic animal smut tip, though, so help him pay the bills by all means. At least the book is not 300 different variations of "Stussy," right or maybe nonright? But it’s not 300 T-shirt designs as found at Goodwill, either, and Goodwill needs to filch that idea and support their cause asap.

In summary, this is a book of T-shirt designs that don’t really belong on T-shirts until the oughts turn Logan's Run, i.e. courtesy of the giant, alien WTF still known as Tokyo. Except for Benoa Berger’s design featuring a guy in a green tee with a headless pregnant chick in white garb resting on his “headless” shoulders; that's a tee you could throw through the door of any neighborhood bar and people would fight over it, elder, pioneering Beastie Boys and clueless, sudsy non-McFetridge bears a like.

This discourse of Beams T's T-Shirt Factory is written by Shane Marcone for ignore Magazine, copyright 2007.