Last year, Obey celebrated two and a half decades of street culture presence with a commemorative collection of t-shirts and skate decks. The collection is finally available in Singapore.
To commemorate a successful 25 years, Obey released an anniversary collection of apparel and skate decks with imagery that the brand’s founder Shepard Fairey believed were crucial to his evolution as an artist and designer.
Fairey’s creation of the iconic Obey sticker back in 1989 eventually evolved into a global street art movement. His pieces are inspired from his own experiences, philosophies as well as punk and skateboard sub-cultures. It’s taken a while but the anniversary collection has finally reached our shores and is now available in stores. Here’s a closer look at the four t-shirt designs and two skate decks that form the backbone of the collection:
The first piece of this collection features the “Obey Exclamation” graphic which Fairey created back in 1996. He was inspired by Barbara Kruger’s art as well as Russian constructivism. This piece, being his first mass-produced photography poster, can be considered a milestone in the history of Obey.
The print on this tee came from an actual photograph of when Fairey and his friends were pulled over. One of them was bold enough to ask the officer to hold up the sticker and pose. Fun fact: Fairey has been arrested 16 times!
George Orwell’s concept of “Big Brother is Watching You” and the increase of video surveillance over time was the inspiration behind this graphic. Fairey illustrated this piece by hand and included the reflection of the Obey Giant in the center of the eye.
This last design is a surveillance image stolen from one of Fairey’s earlier trips to Tokyo. He used a long extension pole to paste an eight-feet long poster on an 11-storey building, and while it only stayed up for a week, Fairey gathered that it caught the attention of many passersby.
The Obey 25th Anniversary Collection is now available at Tangs Orchard and Tangs Vivocity, while Dashsmith and Star360 will only stock the collection at the end of this month. Skate decks can be purchased at Go Sports.