Your Cart
Your cart is empty
Rare & VintageMore details below ↓
Charles Manson T-shirt
Sold Out
$45.00
first-order discount · join the list for the code
Measurements
Pit-to-Pit: 22"
Length: 29"
Fits like: XL
Condition
Vintage. Shows character consistent with age.
The Details
The strangest merch controversy of the nineties started at a Newport Beach surf company: Zooport Riot Gear's "Charlie Don't Surf" shirts — Manson's face on the front, the Apocalypse Now line on the back — hit Southern California surf shops in 1991, reportedly with ten cents a shirt flowing to Manson himself, and went national once Axl Rose started wearing one onstage in early 1992. When Guns N' Roses then buried a cover of Manson's "Look at Your Game, Girl" as a hidden track on 1993's The Spaghetti Incident?, victims' advocates demanded a Geffen boycott, and a court eventually directed the song's royalties to the son of one of the murder victims. That is the lane this shirt comes out of — though it isn't the Zooport design. It's the newsprint strain: courtroom column copy, a mugshot grid of the Family, "THE MANSON FAMILY" in red script, the case rerun as front-page wallpaper. Nineties counterculture printed Manson's face as a provocation about fame and media, and the shirts were always more revealing about their era than about him.
White short sleeve cotton tee with Charles Manson graphic.
Sourcing
We source these shirts from thrift stores, estate sales, and directly from bootleg and overprint collectors.
$45.00