Why Kids Clothes Should Be Funny

If you walk through most kids clothing stores, you start noticing a pattern. Everything looks very serious. Neutral colors, minimal graphics, safe little sayings that feel like they were written by a committee somewhere.

But childhood itself is not serious at all.

Kids say ridiculous things. They invent games that make absolutely no sense to adults. They laugh so hard at a joke that they tell it for three straight weeks. They spill popsicles down the front of their shirts and then run off like nothing happened.

That is why I have always loved designing kids t-shirts. A good kids tee should feel like childhood. A little messy, a little funny, and full of personality.

Some of our best selling designs over the years have been the simplest ones. Shirts like S’mores Not Wars or Ice Cream Taster or The Good Dudes Club. Kids love them because they feel playful and slightly mischievous. Parents love them because they capture a little moment that feels true to childhood.

What surprised me most after years of running this business is how sentimental these shirts become. Parents write to me all the time saying they saved one of our tees in a memory box. Or they handed it down to a younger sibling. Or they found an old photo years later and the shirt instantly brought back a whole season of their child’s life.

Which means that in a strange way a kids shirt can end up holding a lot of memories. And that is something I never expected when I first started cutting shapes out of felt at my kitchen table.