This summer, I backed a Kickstarter campaign to help get Starstuff Clothing off the ground. My funding level entitled me to two shirts which I received a couple of weeks ago. After wearing them a bit, I thought I’d offer a review. But first, here they are, modeled by yours truly:
Believe it or not, I am not a professional model. I know, right? Anyway, as you can see, the shirts are complete wraparound space images! Starstuff calls these Galaxy shirts, but they are really Hubble Space Telescope images of the Orion Nebula and the Tarantula Nebula, both of which are star forming regions in the Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud.
What really sets these shirts apart is that the images are dyed into the fabric using a process called sublimation printing. As Starstuff explains on their site:
Essentially, a gigantic sheet of ink-covered paper is laid across a blank shirt. The ink is pressed and heated, literally vaporizing the ink … which then immediately binds to the fibers of the shirt. You can’t feel the ink printed on top of the shirt, because it’s not — it’s DYED into each individual thread. This creates an incredibly natural, smooth feel to the shirt — and it’s literally impossible for the image to crack or flake off over time like regular screenprinted shirts do. The colors will always stay vibrant and amazing as long as you live.
I was a bit skeptical at first, having bought many a t-shirt that looks cool but turns out to be rather uncomfortable to wear. However, these shirts are very comfy and wear very easily. I haven’t noticed any wrinkling, binding, or fading since I’ve had them. W00T!!!
But this technique does have one drawback: the ink cannot make its way into every fiber and thread of the shirt, particularly in the seams and armpits. The result are white “image artifacts” in the shirts – that is, spots where the ink didn’t reach. Starstuff is very up front about this, and they explain this phenomenon on their website. My shirts were no exception to this problem.
In my view, this is hardly a show-stopper. I’ve found that the white seams really don’t distract from the beauty of the shirt. But I’d like to point this out just in case anyone decides to pick one up and wonders what’s going on there.
And I hope you will pick one up, because any business that promotes an appreciation of the cosmos is a business very well worth supporting. Besides, you’ll look damn good doing it. I love my shirts and look forward to ordering more as their product offering expands. If you’re like me, you probably wear your love for astronomy on your sleeve. Now you wear it on the rest of the shirt, too!