Shikisai: Alternative Interactive T-shirts

When is a T-shirt more than just a T-shirt?

When husband and wife designers, Noto Hirotsugu and Noto Miyo, add ribbons, chains, plastic, tags, buttons and more to screen printed line art to turn the clothes on your back into interactive art.


Above: talented husband and wife team, Noto-fusai ( * "Noto" is their last name. "Fu" means husband. "Sai" means wife. All together, Noto-Fusai stands for "Mr. and Mrs. Noto".)

And they call it "Shikisai"

What is shikisai?
In their words:

Incorporating the interactivity,the mundanity, and the sense of fun, SHIKISAI is trying to explore the alternative possibilities of t-shirt design, through the use of black print on white surface.

The Products

The Reversi Shirt ( In Japan, Reversi is a very popular family game for children first to learn the hierarchical relationship.):




The Blinds Shirt:




The Shoelace Shirt:




The Faucet Shirt:



The Bathtub Plug Shirt:



The Tricycle Shirt:



The Shoulderbag Shirt:




The Umbrella Shirt:



The T-shirt Shirt:



The Book Shirt:



Power line Shirt:



and they also makes shirts for children and even dogs, too!


for Kids:



And, at Design Tide in Tokyo 2006, they newly introduced a series of "shikisai dog T-shirts", which is a collaborated work with the San Francisco-based modern pet furniture company Everyday Studio.

For Dogs:




Purchase the shikisai doggy shirts here.

The Designers:

Noto-Fusai: husband (Noto Hirotsugu)

after his sudden resignation from teaching history at high school, he learned design from the designers like Susan Kralovec (everyday studio), Aaron Lown (built new york), Ted Noten and Gijs Bakker(Droog Design). Now in japan, on his native land, he is looking firmly at what he want/can/should do. shikisai is his first project.

Noto-Fusai: wife (Noto Miyo)

graduated the same design school as her husband, KIDI parsons, she chose the career school to learn technical aspect of fashion, like pattern and sewing. at the same time she started her career as an assistant of the costume designer Anan Asuka, under whom she takes parts of accessory design, hair and makeup arrangement for models. the original pictures of shikisai t-shirts are all hand-drawn by her.

Where can you buy these fabulously creative shirts?
Right here.