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Anti-Abercrombie

Tom’s clothing is sold in diverse San Francisco boutiques.

Chinese icons get new spin in Tom’s T-shirt line

By Yafonne | Special to AsianWeek

When it comes to urban casual appeal, the subtle, wry and understated is becoming all the rage in San Francisco subculture boutiques. Take it from Tom Sieu, 32, a young Chinese American designer whose one-year-old T-shirt line, Tom’s, is beginning to set its own folksy, down-to-earth trend in the Bay Area. An outgrowth of his personal fascination with Chinese icons of past and present, Sieu’s silk screening hobby has quickly turned into a full-blown T-shirt business he can hardly keep up with.

Tom’s clothing is now sold in San Francisco boutiques including Get Ups in the Castro, KidRobot in the Haight, Zoe in Laurel Heights and Guyshop online.

“I have a very informal approach to it all,” admits the soft-spoken Sieu in an interview at the café formerly known as Circadia now a Starbucks, his medium-length black hair washed in reddish brown highlights. “I look for a good match to what Tom’s about — urban gear with subculture angle and feel.”

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Born in Taiwan and relocated to the United States at the age of 4, Sieu is now based in San Francisco and a partner of the graphic design studio, Tom & John: A Design Collaborative. An instructor in graphic design at the Academy of Art, Sieu’s commercial and personal projects often mix fashion, graphic design, photography, off-set printing and silkscreen printing. His work is included in the permanent collection of graphic design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and has received honorable mentions in publications such as CA Magazine and Print Magazine.

After originally naming his line “Shao Lin,” until he discovered another T-shirt line with the same name cashing in on the warrior/sci-fi action hero look, Sieu decided upon a looser icon approach.

“For me, my clothing line is about accessing stereotypical images found in Chinese history and pop culture and then giving them a twist,” comments the tall and lanky Sieu, dressed in dark gray jeans and a long-sleeved brown T-shirt imprinted with a laughing “Buddha” image.

Sieu finds graphic beauty in everyday objects, and especially everyday modern Chinese objects. Returning from his first visit to China recently, Sieu collected a whole array of industrial replicated objects — from Buddhist monastery cards of the goddess Kwan Yin, a golden red Mao Zhe Dong face pin and a common soap bar packaging with a fat sitting “Buddha” image, to the image of two flying horses on a cigarette package, and see-through yellow plastic water guns.

“All images come from very specific cultures. How can someone else re-interpret these images from another angle?” asks Sieu. “Being Western, I have a fresh pair of eyes when I see these images. It’s beautiful graphically and shows a strong sense of history.”

Through silkscreen, Tom juxtaposes these “found images” as a way of exploring deeper meanings of objects we are surrounded by on a daily basis.

“As a graphic designer looking at the environment around me, it’s interesting to me how to represent a specific culture,” notes Sieu, already staring out the window. “Just noticing a half torn Mao poster on that building across the street. They are doing the same thing. They’re lifting formal images, in this case Mao, a historical figure used in a very authoritative way. So even out in the street, there’s this attitude. I think it’s hilarious.”

Likewise, Sieu’s T-shirts possess intelligent content and a subtle urban humor. “If they get it, great, if not, that’s fine as well. It’s the initial reaction to the work. Good design should be accessible, not exclusive.”

“For example, I am a huge fan of the Ultraman series of sci-fi Japanese animation films. So I created this T-shirt with the “good” Chinese word on front while the back side has the “evil” Chinese word, playing on the duality of the image,” describes Sieu, showing the designs in his catalog. “Now the Spaceboy, wearing a World War II fighter pilot helmet holding a bouquet of carnations doing a Heisman pose comes from an old Chinese calendar celebrating the New Year. It dates back to the 1920s. And of course the Kwan Yin image dates back thousands of years. All these images converge in current time. I am trying to make these images timeless.”

Unlike Abercrombie & Fitch, whose dated stereotypical images of Chinese laundrymen and rickshaw carriers on T-shirts perpetrated negative stereotypes of Chinese Americans, Sieu strives for positive stereotypes using Chinese icons, though that has its pitfalls.

“I hope I am using it in a way that’s honoring the image as opposed to making fun of it. The choice of words you use in graphic design is all-important. It conveys a very specific message. Not using words, I try to use humor that is universal.”

For now, not driven by the economics of it, Sieu finds an unparallel sense of artistic freedom and intellectual inquiry with his T-shirt designs. “It’s about the playfulness of the images. It’s celebratory. I’m mainly trying to have fun with it. Explore things that have fascinated me since childhood.”

Currently, Tom’s clothing is sold in diverse San Francisco boutiques, including Egg (85 Carl Street), Get-Ups (600 Castro Street), Kid Robot (1512 Haight Street), and Guyshop (www.guyshop.com/shop/guys/tom/toms.asp). To obtain Tom’s Winter ’02 Catalog, call 415-722-4216, e-mail tomsieu@pacbell.net or log onto www.toms-sf.com.