Cannoneer Ringer

Cannon ave was a block away from my childhood home; its where I scraped my knee on the concrete for the very first time, its where I played manhunt with my friends, and its where I got picked up from the school bus. Cannon ave was the start of it all, and it was the basis for all the sports teams in Lansdale: The Cannoneers. From a very young age my father used sports to instill in me the mindset of hard work and having your brothers’ backs, and as a kid this made me absolutely obsessed with football. Like most kids I wanted to be an NFL player when I grew up, and its all I thought about night & day —- the white body and grass stain is used to represent the jerseys we had growing up and the stains on the white that my mom could never get out of my uniforms. I played football from age 6-18 and in the midst of that also picked up baseball —- which comes the inspiration for the shoulder. The shoulder is supposed to represent stirrups that were worn back in the 80s with socks, we wore them in our american legion league. The reason I chose a ringer tee is simply due to my obsession with them. Ringer tees are quite possibly my favorite article of clothing and I really wanted to make my own but had to really dig deep to figure out how to make it unique so I chose two additional design aspects: 1. The colored waistband —- on ringer tees the waistband is not typically the same color as the collar/sleeves so I wanted to do this for once, and 2. A non printed graphic on the chest —- sticking with the theme of baseball/football I chose a “letterman” letter ‘C’ logo for Cannoneers. However, letterman letters are typically block letters, so how can I make this unique I thought? Cursive. I never see script/cursive letters on letterman jackets. If you havent been able to tell by now I very much always want to innovate and do something that hasnt been done before. I think stains show a huge interaction between the person wearing the item and the garment itself, and I really think it can be the new distressing. Simple on the surface but meaningful.