Love the shirt you’re in

You don’t have to be crazy about Jo’burg to live here, but it helps. Bradley Kirshenbaum has been celebrating the dichotomy of big-city life for six years now, with his iconic range of Love Jozi T-Shirts.

Last month he launched his new design collection called the Online Range.

‘All the models for this range were sourced on Twitter, Facebook, or via email. The day of the shoot was the first time I’d ever spoken to most of them in real life. The range is also not specifically all about Jo’burg, which the others have been,” Kirshenbaum says.

The range includes a ‘Twitter” T-shirt, covered with tweets about Jo’burg. ‘I love the way people hashtag ‘#lovejozi’ on Twitter, whether they are talking about me or about the city in general. People really love living in Jo’burg now.”

There’s also a Facebook-inspired Tee that reads ‘Like Jozi”, continuing Kirshenbaum’s series of different iterations of the Love Jozi phrase — previous ones have included ‘Liebe Jozi” (German), ‘Liefde Jozi” (Dutch) and ‘Amor Jozi” (Portuguese).

Love Jozi’s T-shirts are made from pure cotton ‘except for some of the designs like the twist seam, which are a cotton lycra” and all the fabric is made locally. The actual shirts are designed by Jacques van der Watt of Black Coffee and the Online Range will include several new cuts.

‘T-shirt design has changed so much,” Kirshenbaum says. ‘They’re much more oversized at the moment. Necks are wider. Two years ago everyone wanted slim-fitting sexy little Tees. It’s different now. Overseas customers can even design their own T-shirts because digital printing is so advanced.

I don’t offer that, because we don’t have the technology here. But it’s also because I like being the designer. Love Jozi is as much about the message as the actual garment.”

The new range includes some strong messages, like a hand showing the middle finger sourced from an image of a refugee camp tent during the xenophobia riots. ‘I wanted to call it ‘Fuck Off Xenophobia’, but in the end I just went with ‘Up Yours’,” he says. Another design shows the word ‘VACANT” made up of tiny red ants, a subtle comment about hijacked buildings in the inner city.

There are also T-shirts that play with Love Jozi’s signature graphic of the Jo’burg skyline. ‘I love seeing the city bracketed by the Brixton and Hillbrow towers,” Kirshenbaum says. ‘I want to do a snowglobe with Johannesburg. It could have gold glitter instead of snow.”