Obey is Shepard Fairey's clothing label, launched in 2001 out of a sticker he made as a student in 1989 — the Andre the Giant face that ended up on walls across America. The name
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Obey is Shepard Fairey's clothing label, launched in 2001 out of a sticker he made as a student in 1989 — the Andre the Giant face that ended up on walls across America. The name comes from John Carpenter's They Live. The range here runs to graphic T-shirts and hoodies, baggy denim and carpenter trousers, woven shirts and caps, and the graphics are the point rather than the decoration.
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About Obey clothing
In 1989 Shepard Fairey, then a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, made a sticker of the wrestler André the Giant with the words "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" under it. It meant nothing deliberately — he described it at the time as an experiment in phenomenology, which is a grand way of saying he wanted to see what people would do with an image that refused to explain itself. Skaters and graffiti writers spread it, and it turned up on walls in Providence, then Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
A trademark challenge in 1994 forced a redesign, and the stylised face plus the single word OBEY is what came out of it. The word is lifted from John Carpenter's They Live, a film about hidden messages instructing people to consume and conform, which tells you most of what you need to know about the brand's disposition. Fairey launched the clothing in 2001 as a way of getting the imagery off walls and onto people. He is also the artist behind the 2008 Obama Hope poster.
Obey graphic T-shirts and hoodies
T-shirts are the largest part of the range and the most direct expression of what Obey is for. Some carry the icon — Icon Stencil Flame, Eyes 3, Heat Map Icon, Exclamation — and others carry standalone artwork, from the Blurred Soccer Jersey print to Love Is Brutal and Make Art Third Eye. The heavyweight tees are the substantial ones; the classic fits are lighter and closer to a standard cut.
Hoodies split the same way. The Extra Heavy pieces — the Icon Extra Heavy Hood and Corp Extra Heavy Hood — are the weightiest in the range. The pigment-dyed pieces, including the Lowercase Pigment hoods, are dyed after making, so the colour sits unevenly and fades from the first wash rather than the fiftieth.
Obey denim, trousers and shirts
The bottoms are where Obey is least like a graphics brand and most like a workwear one. The Bigwig Baggy denim is the widest cut here, in several washes; the Classic Baggy is a touch narrower. Alongside them sit the Hardwork and Bigwig carpenter trousers with the hammer loop and utility pockets, and the Giant Cargo and Big Timer Utility pants at the roomier end.
The woven shirts — Alan, Ambient, Bigwig Plaid — are short-sleeve and patterned, and the Opena denim jacket and Base Trucker cover the outerwear alongside the Vista and Arden jackets.
Browse all clothing at Yards Store, or see what we have in our Manchester and Sheffield shops.
