The line is the shirt.
We started Tags Supply because the best shirts we own are the ones strangers read out loud.
Not the logo shirts. Not the ones that tell you where somebody went to school. The ones with a line on them that makes a person across the bar exhale through their nose, point, and say "where'd you get that."
That is the whole product. A line worth wearing, on a shirt worth keeping.
So we work in that order. The line comes first. If it doesn't hold up typed into a text message, it doesn't get made. Then we build it into something that looks like it came out of the right drawer: heavy type, worn in, printed like it has been through the wash a few times already.
The shirt underneath is the part we argued about longest. It is a 60/40 cotton poly blend at 4.3 ounces, the same class of blank the good shirts you already own are cut from. Soft the first day, softer after ten washes, collar that holds. We tore the factory tag out and put ours in, because nobody wants to wear a shirt that reads like a receipt.
Every design is ours. Nothing licensed, nothing borrowed, nothing a lawyer had to sign off on. If a line references something, it does it the way a friend would: sideways, and only for the people who get it.
We are two guys in Charlotte. One of us has the ideas. The other one makes them printable. Both of us wear the samples until we are sure.
Tags Supply. The tag is the point.