British-made like everything we do and it’s an ART SPECIAL!This is our 2025 Summer Shirt. Have you got yours yet?
Alan Coulson is an acclaimed portrait painter based up the road from us in Hebden Bridge. His work has featured in the National Portrait Gallery and even on the cover of the New Yorker magazine. We’re big fan of Alan’s work. His skill with a paintbrush and tube of oil paint is out of this world.
We set Alan the challenge of leaving the familiarity of cotton canvas, painting instead on a piece of selvedge denim, the same we use for our GVNR 14 and M14 jeans.
A few weeks after dropping off the denim, we got a message from Alan letting us know the painting was almost complete. We popped over to see him and have a brew. What a painting!
Working on raw indigo denim had presented Alan with a whole new painting experience. Indigo dye isn’t fixed, it moves and it bleeds from the denim surface. Using it as a substrate makes for a very interactive painting experience and Alan soon realised that his tube of white paint was all that was really needed because the indigo released from the denim could be used to create shadows.
Alan’s finished painting was transformed into a half tone digital image by Vic and scaled down to fit the area between the pleats on the back of the denim shirt.
Painted on denim to be printed on denim. It’s a true celebration of the creativity of this fantastic cloth. The next step is for you to wear it and work in your fades, enhancing the character of this lovely denim.
Painted in Calderdale, made in Enfield, printed in Huddersfield.
Denim Head Shirt8.5oz denim
Featuring exclusive artwork by acclaimed National Portrait Gallery artist, Alan Coulson. Skulls are a repeating motif for HebTroCo. You will see them on our jeans patch, our embroidered garment labels and now this very special shirt. Everybody has a skull and they are an enduring image in art representing the eternal cycle of life and death. Cut loose with a boxy fit for summer shenanigans, cool in the breeze.