Abercrombie & Fitch T-Shirts Look Like Transfers

Yesterday while at the Barber Shop with my sons I looked at a large Abercrombie and Fitch clothing catalog. There was a line of tee shirts for men with what I am assuming was a silk screened image but it looked like an image transfer onto cloth. This could easily be reproduced at home.

There are two different components to the Abercrombie and Fitch tee shirts. One is that first the shirt has a look as if it was a t-shirt with an image on it that is now being worn inside-out, and then there is a ‘newer’ looking image on top of that other side.

This could be duplicated at home by printing text on your home laser printer and doing a transfer, without reversing/flipping the image. This would make the text come out backwards. If the transfer is rough and scratchy this would also achieve the look that the image was really on the other side and the shirt is being worn inside-out.

The darker, newer looking image could be applied with an iron-on transfer. You could make the graphics in Photoshop and then use the image-flip tool and print the image on an iron-on transfer sheet. This way when the iron-on transfer is applied, the writing is the ‘right’ way and would come out very solid and “new” looking.

Here is one example of one of their shirts in the “attitude tees” line for men.

I can’t find images online that matched the catalog that I viewed. Some of the new tees had a very rough and scratchy image which is very much like the image that is achieved when doing a Citrasolv or Acetone transfer. This could easily be done at home using an image printed off with a laser printer and the transfer medium (i.e. Citrasolv). Seeing those t-shirts was inspirational to me because I realized I could replicate this at home inexpensively and hey, it is ‘in style’, too!

Here are some directions for doing Citrasolv transfers, with illustrations so you can see what I am talking about, if you haven’t done them yourself yet.