We Belive: The Info

The line is about more than gimmicky shirts, however, the choice to do this shirt wasn’t a hard one. There is a shortage of Baltimore referenced clothing. When I’d visit streetwear shops all over, no matter the place, there would be LA and NY related shirts. I wanted to explain in full how the shirt the came to be.

Tommie Battle, a classmate at Towson University (and great photographer whose work can be seen here), like myself is a fan of streetwear. Circa 2007 I saw him in this shirt that blew my mind. It read:

This shirt was done by New York streetwear company, Mighty Healthy. I’d never seen anything like it. The use of well known magazines to create this phrase was genius to me. So I kept it in my mind until….

I was granted the opportunity to create a line. I loved the idea of creating such a tee but there were several factors I wanted to consider:

• Blatantly taking the idea to make my own t-shirt would be in poor taste
• How the hell could I create the feel of the above mentioned without taking the idea?
• How could I tastefully make a Baltimore reference without a damn Baltimore Oriole character involved?
• How could I make it turn heads?

All things considered I began my brainstorming. I wanted readily identifiable references to Baltmore. As I traveled throughout this town that I loved I noticed something. There were a billion “Believe” stickers, signs, posters, etc.

For those out-of-towners or in-towners who aren’t familiar…the Believe campaign was a means to create a mood of positivity about the war on drugs in Baltimore. Created in April 2002, “The campaign calls for Baltimore to believe, believe that drugs can be eliminated off of the streets, and drug dealers to be punished.” (Azete). It is no mistaking that the Baltimore has a drug problem, with almost 60,000 residents in Baltimore City abusing drugs. “Believe” can be seen plastered all over Baltimore. It appealed to me in a lot of ways. I, like many people in urban environments, was impacted by drugs. It ruined many people I knew and I hoped that the campaign would help. Plus something about bold letters was sexy to me.

The Mighty Healhy shirt made more than 3 references to something else. I didn’t want any more than that. I wanted something that literally said Baltimore on it in addition to the Believe picture so I went with the obvious choice. The Baltimore Sun. The logo was powerful, recognizable, and esthetically pleasing.

The last part of the puzzle before I began arrangement was figuring out the style of font I wanted to use. I credit the graphic tee movement of the last couple of years for this one. This put band tees on kids that hadn’t heard so much as 5 seconds of their music. I was out and about and I saw this design on a shirt.

Something about the font spoke to me. So I found something fairly similar and there was the missing link. Lettering can make or break a shirt….and something about this lettering was amazing to me.

So I began brainstorming, often sharing my ideas with my sister. She was a bit hesitant to accept the idea as a good one due to my lack of a state that worked. What do I mean by that you ask?
Well the original conception of the t-shirt used the Believe and Baltimore Sun paper but it was a run-on sentence. I can’t remember the exact phrasing but it was something along the lines of “We believe in love and truth in the Baltimore Sun”. Terrible. The more I thought about it, the harder it had become. So I left it alone. While sitting around with someone, a thought suddenly popped into my head. “We Believe In Living Under The Baltimore Sun”™. And so it came to be.
The shirt can be interpreted a million ways but this was literally what I was trying to say through it: “Despite turmoil (drugs, violence, etc.), we still believe in existing in this beautiful place”. It seemed to accomplish that.

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