(image via Merchbar)
(This one’s for my friend Jordan, who rightly accused me of link-baiting with the Dead on Facebook)
Have you heard? The fashion industry as we know it is dead. You know what’s not dead? The Grateful Dead—just ask Nike or any of the other brands they’ve collaborated with lately. People love Deadhead culture, probably now more than ever, and there’s one aspect of it that has impressively endured through the years: merch (short for merchandise).
I won’t deal with the specifics of Dead merch here—to really get into that, check out Dead Style by street style god and “reluctant anthropologist” Mordechai Rubinstein, aka @mistermort on IG. I’m more concerned with the broader trend of tie dye merch (like those sweatsuits I mentioned in the last newsletter), and merch in general, because apparently merch is where things are going.
Merch is nothing new to music fans, whether you’re buying a band t-shirt in a dive bar or at a stadium show (or online). But now it seems like everything is merch. If you’re a fan of a band, or a media property, or an influencer, or anything, really, those entities are probably trying to sell you merch. And there’s a good chance at least some of that merch is tie dye.
I noticed the tie dye trend a few years ago and thought it was cute, and cool, and hey, I wonder if all my jam band-loving friends from high school held onto their outfits because the resale market for that stuff—the jam band style and, more broadly, gorpcore—is hot right now.
But why?
Everyone on my timeline was suddenly going to Dead and Co. shows, which makes sense because I grew up around that culture, but I was surprised to see that John Mayer was involved (read more here about his Deadhead bromance with Bravo’s Andy Cohen). I started hearing about a brand called Online Ceramics, which began as two art school pals selling shirts on the lot at Dead shows and has now transformed into something much bigger, collaborating with brands like A24 and GQ in addition to making their own original shirts. And Online Ceramics is just one shop. Now tie dye is everywhere.
Everyone from Bon Appetit to Tiktok teens wants to sell me tie dye. And I have one hypothesis for why: Deadheads are running the fashion media now.* The Editor in Chief of GQ, Will Welch, is a confirmed Deadhead. This theory is definitely Condé Nast-centric, but I think it holds. I’m still learning how the fashion ecosystem works (or, how it worked before it collapsed), but it seems pretty clear to me that if fashion media people are Deadheads who publish articles about what people are wearing to see Dead and Co. at the Gorge, and brands are posting Grateful Dead primers to help customers understand the culture around the clothes they’re selling, then it’s not too much of a stretch to understand why the Dead are still relevant in 2020.
GQ even dropped new merch today, and among the selections is a “Print Ain’t Dead” shirt hand-dyed by Welch himself (it’s already sold out).
(photo via GQ)
*I have a related theory about skateboarding
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When I was pregnant I kept telling people I was registering for so much tie dye cause it was “the true gender neutral” And I stand by it! Also! I have always had a tie dye collection and one time my husband told me he was not attracted to me when I was wearing a ratty BLUE PHISH TIE DYE and I continue to wear it and our marriage ensures!!! Love in the 90s, 10s and now. He’d probably hate that I shared that. Thanks for this!