Jan continues, “I like working with shocking subject material; creating designs that can challenge what is ‘acceptable’ to wear on a t-shirt.” These aren’t for the zip-ups and are not to be buttoned-up, but to be worn to be loud about what you identify with. These are worn signifiers, woven in with your own set of beliefs, values, thoughts, and likes. Jan explains how they’re printed: “The artwork is laid out digitally and then screen-printed onto t-shirts, sometimes in combination with appliqué and hand-drawn and hand-coloured elements.”
Jan was drawn to designers from London’s 70s and 80s punk scene, to Artistique et Sentimental and Fifth Column designers who expanded the garment as part of the artwork rather than a frame to it. “They created a new form of visual structure wherein the shape and texture of the t-shirt worked in tandem with the dynamism of the artwork; expanded beyond the physical borders of the sleeves and the hems, coalescing with the body of the person wearing it,” Jan says.