Clown Shirt for Clown Times
WACKO MARIA has been Jokerfied. The 20-year-old Japanese clothing label is doing straight-up Joker merch. And it's not alone. The fans love it. And I kinda do, too.
It's amusing enough that WACKO MARIA made a collection of Joker clothes, though it fits well enough within the yakuza-meets-greaser label's tendency to turn out $350 shirts printed with pop culture references as unsubtle as Basquiat and Superbad.
But I find WACKO MARIA's take on Joker, Batman's most famous villain, ironically compelling.
What can I say? It's the classic cycle: Dislike something, it sticks around, it becomes ironically endearing.
Due primarily to Heath Ledger's co-starring role in 2008's Dark Knight and, to a lesser extent, Jared Leto's apocryphal Joker method acting (and incredible "Damaged" forehead tat), the Joker once came to represent so many self-described and epically self-serious "dangerous loners" (though, honestly, those guys now are likely bigger fans of Patrick Bateman).
As such, the Joker is quite funny in a detached sort of way, hence the many memes since: We live in a society, I'm going through a Joker arc, Joker's trick.
But the WACKO MARIA Joker clothing isn't really a joke. Same for the amazingly timed collection of Joker-fied T-shirts released almost simultaneously by edgy Japanese streetwear line Saint Michael.
I mean, it's all certainly a little self-aware. This is goofy stuff. But the brands doesn't license things ironically.
Maybe the Joker clothes feel — gulp — kinda timely?
You don't need me, random writer man, to tell you that the times, well, they do be crazy. And maybe it's just my irony goggles strapped a bit too tight but isn't it a little comforting to see the silly clown man on some silly T-shirts?
And the shirts are indeed quite silly, mostly utilizing that one famous photo of the Joker doing his signature head tilt.
Both WACKO MARIA and Saint Michael created suitably unserious stuff.
It's all basically elevated Joker merch.
Saint Michael made pre-washed Joker tees while WACKO MARIA splashed one of its signature short-sleeved summer shirts with four giant Joker heads and one cute little Joker. Another T-shirt wears a "SUBJECT: THE JOKER" graphic so absurd that you'd swear it was ripped off the racks of Hot Topic.
But this was no laughing matter for WACKO MARIA's customers, who immediately picked the racks clean. Sick and twisted, indeed.
