The "Tabloid Tee" From Nineteenth Letter Chicago Bears the Best Examples of Celebrity Sensationalism

The next time you pass the checkout at the grocery store...

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Grocery stores put tabloid publications, magazines, chewing gum and candy at the checkout stand for two reasons: to catch your eye, and to make you purchase something last-minute; something you might have forgotten, but more plausibly, an item you just decide to buy on a whim. Both aims have the same end: to make money. 

Tabloids fulfill the bait portion of the cash-grubbing scheme: the National Inquirer, even women's magazines like Cosmopolitan put enormous, multicolored block lettering on their covers to attract the attention of potential readers. And if you're standing in line bored to literal tears, you might see something else you want to buy. 

It was exactly this fuckery, (albeit successful example of marketing and layout), that inspired Nineteenth Letter Chicago's Sergio Scott when he was designing his capsule line of t-shirts and shorts.

Scott became interested in the ways idle gossip became fact, and how it had the power to ruin things. He also wanted to create something so intriguing that people couldn't walk by without paying attention. The Midwestern designer's aptly named "Tabloid Tee" is completely covered in photos of the most stunning sensationalist bull of our times: the Kardashians, cheating scandals, and urban legends concerning the deaths of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. One thing cannot be denied - it's eye-catching. Even in black and white, the shirts and shorts are so jarring, they act in the same manner a headline does when you want to click on it. You just can't look away.

Nineteenth Letter's tabloid tee is now available at VFiles. Cop here, or over there.

[via Nineteenth Letter Chicago]

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