It started with a street sign.

Anyone who has spent time in Los Angeles knows them — the neighborhood signs that tell you, quietly and without ceremony, that you've arrived somewhere. Silver Lake. Los Feliz. Echo Park. I've always loved t-shirts, so the idea was simple: I wanted to wear that place — to make my own version of the sign, as a t-shirt. Something to keep me connected to my people and the places I've traveled.

That idea became this art project.

Every shirt begins with a subject: a place I've lived, a place I've wandered, a place I still need to end up in — or a place where someone I love calls home. Sometimes the subject isn't on a map at all. Sometimes it's a filmmaker, a poet, an idea. The things that make a place a place, that give presence to space. Here we create time and space.

The shirt is the object — the canvas. Like film, we begin in black and white. White ink on black. Black ink on white. Type, composition, restraint. Every shirt will have its black-and-white counterpart. Color will be introduced to Topher's Tees in due time, the way it came to cinema: earned, deliberate, and worth the wait. Obviously, I am pulling hard on some of Godard's films in this way. Le Mépris, in English Contempt, would be my first example of his use of color. But I will stay on the surface with this concept for these t-shirts and tip my hat.

Welcome to the collection.

Fade in.