Custom T-shirts Now Available

For those of us living outside of the UK or US, purchasing custom t-shirts from websites like Etsy and Redbubble can be an expensive endeavour. To circumvent costly shipping charges, I design and print my own t-shirts.

A variety of designs can be found by clicking on the Custom T-shirt tab, with more designs being uploaded in the very near future.

The Bleak, Dystopian Future Of Men's Fashion

Roger Deakins' cinematography in Blade Runner 2049 is, to use a frequently overused adjective, stunning. Complimenting it is Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch's score - a skull scraping sonic landscape which pays homage to Vangelis while effectively elevating the relatively straightforward plot with its anxiety inducing drones. Dennis Gassner's production design adds a gritty realism, extending well beyond the frame to immerse you in a world that has expanded and moved on since the original film. Clearly, much time and effort has gone into the look, sound and feel of this movie. Which is why it is perplexing that the costume design for both Harrison Ford's Deckard and Ryan Gosling's Officer K are so utterly, frustratingly bland.

Think back to the costumes of Blade Runner. From J. F. Sebastian, to Roy, to Tyrell, each and every character had a distinct look; their clothes, iconic. Yet in 2049, men's fashion looks suspiciously contemporary. Their hairstyles, too, are likely the same hairstyles Ford and Gosling walked into the studio with on the day of shooting. This lack of imagination is most noticeable in the two available action figures.

Other than his token Blade Runner-ish jacket, Officer K is wearing jeans (with the cuffs rolled up) and a top that he may well have purchased at Gap, circa 2007. 

In contrast, the Blade Runners in the original (Deckard, Gaff and Holden), are all dressed in shirts and ties. Now, I understand fashion can change in 30 years, but I also know fashion is cyclical. And jobs that required a tie 30 years ago tend to still require a tie today. Or at the very least, a collared shirt.

Deckard is dressed even more casually in t-shirt and jeans; almost as if Harrison Ford stipulated in his contract that he would only accept the role if he could wear his own clothes. Considering the popularity of cosplay and pop culture conventions, it feels like the producers of this film have missed a trick. No one will be attending the next comic-con dressed as Deckard from Blade Runner 2049. And even if someone did, you would never actually notice.

Consider, when K tracks him down, Deckard has been living alone in the desert for many years. Personal hygiene might be a thing of the past, so I'd imagine him looking more like a post apocalyptic hobo than your dad on his day off work. He would unlikely be concerned with facial grooming, nor would he have access to a hairdresser. A more appropriate look might have been a shaved head and unkempt beard. Around his neck, perhaps a scarf or goggles would be useful in a dusty, desert environment. In the film it's snowing in LA, so we can assume Las Vegas would also be cold - for this reason, a t-shirt might be a little underdressed, even indoors. Layers would be more suitable, clothes that have lost all colour and have been mended numerous times. We already know that Deckard has a penchant for overcoats, so, fan service aside, I would've liked to see him in one similar to the original (rather than Gosling).

Wardrobe may seem superficial, but it is as important as the cinematography, the music, and the production design. There should be logical reasons for a character's costume. And when you have two celebrities as your main characters, it should be of utmost importance to distance them from their real world personas; to allow the audience to invest emotionally in the characters. Blade Runner 2049, unfortunately, has failed in this regard. 

© Jason Morgan, Hollywood Movie Costume & Props 

On a positive note, they have succeeded in giving us an inexpensive, go-to costume for every lazy man forced to wear fancy dress.

Harrison Ford: Absent Father

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Blade Runner franchises.

As much as Harrison Ford would like you to list Jack Ryan as one of his most memorable characters, he will never break the top three. Those positions will be held, in perpetuity, by Han Solo, Indiana Jones and Rick Deckard. Ford is at his best, and his most memorable, when he plays to type. And his type, of course, is the anti-hero. Or at least it was back in the 'good old days'. In this current age of liberal conservatism, our childhood heroes are forced to make amends for their past deeds. And what better way to de-rogue a lovable rogue (or chauvinistic robot rapist/murderer) from our childhood than to reunite him with his estranged child? Many spoilers ahead.

Die Hard, Blade Runner And The Movie Tie-In.

Since the dawn of time, the film industry has looked to novels for inspiration, frequently mining books, comics and graphic novels for movie fodder. Conversely, movies that were scripted without any pre-existing source material were routinely adapted into comic or novel form (the novelisation). To close the loop, novels that were adapted into movies would later be re-released, featuring artwork from the film (and occasionally a title change), to create what is known as the movie tie-in. These rebranded novels were sometimes completely different to the film. Some might even suggest that slapping a celebrity's face onto a novel is a cynical attempt to cash in on the adaptation's success. Case in point:

More Blade Runner Trading Cards.

Following on from my previous post, I've gone and made a mock up of the wax paper you might've bought your Blade Runner trading cards in. I've also put together seven more cards, all at no extra cost to the consumer. Add them to your collection, trade them with your friends, or peg them to the spokes of your BMX. The choice is yours!

Again, I've tried to include images that didn't make it into the theatrical version, and created another card for a deleted scene. 

Trading Cards And The Pre-Digital Era.

Hey kids, remember a time before VOD, DVD and VHS, when you saw a movie at the cinema or drive-in and that was it? Prior to the binge and purge mentality of the digital age, it could take years before you'd see that film again in your living room. When it finally made it to free-to-air television, you'd get a jerky, pan-and-scan, watered down version, sometimes with whole scenes or pages of dialogue missing. If you were lucky enough to own a VCR you might even manage to tape it, sitting rigidly with your thumb hovering over the pause button as you valiantly tried to skip the ads from the recording. That neutered rendition would become the only version you knew, right up until the DVD revolution of the turn of the century.

In the olden days, film novelisations, soundtracks, Read-Along books on vinyl, souvenir magazines and trading cards were some of the many ways you could relive your cinematic experience in that dark period following a film's theatrical run. Trading cards were a particular favourite. The smell of the concrete hard bubble gum, the adrenalin rush of peeling back the wax paper, the junkie's ever increasing desire for more, more, even when every card in the pack was a soul crushing double.

There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to which film or television show warranted a set of trading cards. And more often than not, it was a film's sequel that produced the trading card set rather than the superior original.

With this in mind (and with clearly too much free time on my hands) I decided to right the wrongs of the past and create my own trading cards for something that deserved it more than, say, this abomination: