Less flash, more substance.
The effort to set yourself apart in the t-shirt biz can follow a few different routes. You can go retro-themed color bomb, a la Ed Hardy. You can sell sex like T.I.T.S. You can even go for pure shock
value, something the folks at T-Shirt Hell have managed quite well. Or, like Jeff Gonzalez and Matt Thompson of Seattle-based Choke Shirt Company, you could go for simple, subtle, and quirky-without-being-annoying.
Browsing through their current collections, the striking feature of their line is their ability to come up with the number of designs they have, within the fairly narrow design constraints they have held to and maintain quality. There are only three colors on any given piece: the shirt itself, and the two-tone design on the shirt. None of which is to say it hasn’t been done before. The Internet t-shirt mill is filled with half-heartedly designed, two color casualties. Choke is one of the ones who found the right groove and got it right.
It was, admittedly, an aesthetic born out of necessity. It was cheaper, and when starting things on a shoestring, that sort of thing is important. What it has developed into is unique, visually appealing, and a distinctly Seattle-at-heart brand. And rather than start fixing something that isn’t broken, they’ve stuck to what they’re good at.
And it has paid off pretty well. They opened in 2008. By 2010, Gonzalez left behind the relative security and stability of corporate life to manage Choke, which has taken on a life beyond being a simple t-shirt line. A year into their venture, Thompson and Gonzalez had become frustrated with a lack of creative control, went all in and simply bought their own screen printing press. This in turn led to the establishment of the Choke Print Shop, which has handled accounts for everything from corporate big boys (Amazon, Starbucks, T-Mobile), to a number of charities including the LifelongAIDS Alliance, sports teams, and a slew of other t-shirt companies.
Aside from t-shirts, their designs are also available on hoodies, and as of recently, a children’s line of onsies and toddler tees. The children’s line alone makes noteworthy for those of you with munchkins. Only because if you’ve spent any amount of time shopping for children’s clothes, you know how limited and frankly, uninspired the selections are.
On a closing note, some of you may be wondering about the name. You might think with a name like Choke, maybe these guys are hanging out in some of our city’s more…adventurous neighborhoods. But that wouldn’t be the case. “We were just throwing names around, we liked how it sounded and it stuck,” explained Gonzalez when I asked him about it. “We’ve been told people in Hawaii say it a lot, but neither of us is Hawaiian.” Nothing weird, pervy or dangerous, just pure happenstance.
Choke Shirt Company is currently gearing up to launch their Spring 2013 collection.