Scribble Mouth Tee

A scribble tee where a mouth loses control of its own line

An open mouth in coarse black-and-white halftone, outlined in a heavy black contour, with a tangle of magenta scribble spilling out of it and running down past the lip. A strip of three smaller mouths sits to the right, and a burst of magenta rays closes the panel at the bottom. The scribble tee is the most abstract thing in the collection.

Halftone is the key to reading it. Enlarging a printed image until its dot pattern becomes visible was a Pop Art move first, then a punk and zine one, and it does something specific: it reminds you that you are looking at a reproduction rather than a thing. The mouth is not photographed here, it is quoted. The repeated strip on the right pushes that further, turning one image into a sequence, like frames pulled from contact sheet.

The scribble is the counterweight. Everything else in the panel is mechanical — dots, hard contours, rectangular frames — and then a single loop of magenta is drawn freehand straight through it, ignoring every boundary. Speech rendered as a mess rather than as words. It is the one gesture in the whole design that a machine could not have made, which is exactly why it lands.

It comes in white, apricot, slate and piggy pink. White is the poster reading and the cleanest halftone. Apricot warms the greys toward newsprint. Slate cools them into something more industrial. Piggy pink absorbs the magenta into the base so the scribble reads as tone-on-tone rather than as contrast.

The tee is 240 gsm cotton. Halftone is the single most demanding thing to print on fabric: the dots must stay separate, and on a light cotton that absorbs too much ink they bleed into each other and the whole image turns into flat grey mud.

The cut is oversized from the pattern stage, with a dropped shoulder and a crew neck. Take your usual size for the intended drop, or size down for a closer fit. Cargo trousers below and worn sneakers.

• Type: Oversized graphic tee
• Material: Heavyweight cotton, around 240 gsm
• Print: Back print — halftone mouth with magenta scribble
• Fit: Oversized, drop shoulder, crew neck, short sleeves
• Sizing: True to size for an oversized look — size down for a closer fit
• Colours: White, apricot, slate, piggy pink
• Wear it with: Cargo trousers, worn sneakers