The ‘Shop Dog’ shirt has received quite a bit of attention since our launch and is definitely one of our most popular designs. Numerous publications and blogs have shown interest and even a certain well-known hip-hop artist texted me requesting one for himself. Every time I wear it people come right up and ask about it unlike any other shirt in the line. That’s part of the inspiration, two things that can induce someone to drop their inhibitions and walk up to a total stranger are custom cars and dogs. And even though the two are seldom paired, we thought it would be dope to have both on a T-shirt. (Continue reading after the jump).
The premise of the shirt really isn’t far-fetched, working on your ride while your dog is chillin’ by your side, happy to be in close proximity to his owner yet still on-guard. We used our friend Jayo’s blue Pit Bull, Kobe. Jayo is like our sales/security/down-since-day-one dude. If you were at the Miami Dub show you met him in our booth. Anyway, the original plan was to have a pic like above with Kobe looking as mean as possible, even snarling if we could manage.
…but as you can see, there’s pretty much nothing ferocious about Kobe. That’s a huge misconception about ‘aggressive’ breeds, that they’ll attack anything that moves and that fallacy simply isn’t true.
Kobe was a good sport but we know it was tough for him to pose for such a long period of time, especially when we had two more dogs out back barking at him during the entire shoot.
After 200+ shots we finally got a winner. Being a custom car and/or dog lover, how can you not love this shot?
When it came time to shoot the Lookbook shot, we thought about having our subject holding a dog on its leash but ruled that idea out thinking it would be cheesy but we did want to incorporate the car from the original shoot.
My friend, Mello, was a good sport about the whole thing – dodging the rain, angry security chicks and police the entire time.
The final shot came out great. Photographer David Yates did his thing as usual!
Again, we sincerely thank everyone for showing us so much support. These shirts are moving quickly but we have already placed another stocking order for this design and a few others and we still have ample stock of Large, XL and XXL sizes.
Shout out to It’s a Dog’s World After All in Mableton, GA, as well for the support and inspiration.
-Evan