Well if you are reading this then chances are you are a regular follower of HYA then you may have aleady heard of the French t-shirt company called laFraise (Strawberry). Now that I know that the company is called Strawberry it makes me wonder why they decided on that name. They kindly offered us a t-shirt for a review and hey presto here it is.
Now I may not generally wear most of their designs purely because I do not fall into their demograhic but I had no doubts that I wanted this design after seeing it. One eyed creatures and battleships! It’s pretty damn cool. So yes just to get it out the way, the t-shirt is printed on American Apparel and hell does that red pop. It is RED (caps lock shouting). No branded sewn tags/labels or inside color printed labels, the t-shirt still has the standard AA label which I thought was odd. Without tags the brand experience does feel it bit basic so let’s bring on a strawberry label.
Their packaging was standard upon first inspection but then I noticed it was not just an ordinary logo printed envelope but rather one that has the capacity to increase in size, like a smaller white office version of those brown grocer bags I always see in American movies. There is also a feint tessellated full bleed embossed design which I thought was nice. laFraise also included a logo sticker that I thought would be mental if it was scratch and sniff. I actually did scratch and sniff just to check. So yeah get on it guys!
The print itself is a screen printed heat transfer or as they state on the laFraise website ” Screen Transfer”. This means that the design is screen printed onto special paper and then they are transferred to the garment via a heat press. Supposedly they still have the same durability as regular screen printing. It does feel different, like vinyl sticker, so it sits more on the surface of the t-shirt. I’m interested in seeing how it holds up after some abuse from wear and tear. So far it seems fine as I did stretch it quite a bit and washes fine. This form of printing means you lessen the scare of printing loads of printed t-shirts. laFraise also print designs as Direct To Garment.
laFraise also have a range of their designs as prints for tote bags on an array of different colours. It’s nice to see the different tote bags colours as I have mainly seen the cream ones, so this was news to me! The main thing is that their designs are community driven so if you fancy one of your designs being printed then go ahead!
If you are into the style of designs on laFraise then you will hear no complaints from me.
This t-shirt is called Octowar and is available for €23 (£20)