The influential post-hardcore band, Fugazi, has never sold shirts. Neither has MacKaye’s record label, Dischord Records. This opened up a market for bootleg t-shirts and MacKaye spent a fair bit of time throughout the ‘90s tracking down manufacturers engaged in copyright infringement and shutting them down. After a phone call with a Boston-based t-shirt printer, the manufacturer pivoted from straight up bootlegs to these. McKaye insisted that the shirt manufacturer be equally creative with the accounting as he was with the design and suggested/insisted that the manufacturer give what would typically be an artist’s royalty to a local women’s shelter. which he did.

The back reads “You are not what you own,” a line from the Fugazi song, “Merchandise.”

“I just don’t give a fuck about T-shirts.” - Ian MacKaye