The 41 Most Iconic Pieces From the Golden Age of Merch

It’s Merch Week at GQ. Read The End of Merch and Why Does Gen Z Love Nirvana Tees, Thrasher Hoodies, and Bass Pro Shops Hats?

For about a dozen or so years there, the ascendance of merch—transforming practically overnight from a thing you bought thoughtlessly at a concert to a clouty vehicle for self-expression to an omnipresent force driving the fashion industry forward—was one of the most fascinating ongoing narratives in menswear. We here at GQ, especially, covered that rise with glee: reporting from the front lines of the Great Merch Wars of 2016; watching with ever-deepening curiosity as the trend spread from music and movies to buzzy restaurants and shipping services to local bodegas and regular people.

And now, just like that—as GQ’s Samuel Hine declared in his thoughtful essay yesterday—the merch era is all but over. Like all trends, it has begun to feel stale, repetitive, less creatively potent. But before the craze peters out for good, we want to take a moment here to celebrate all the rabid hype, wild graphics, and big ideas that Peak Merch gave us. Today, we’re running through a full timeline of the bestselling tees, cult-classic caps, niche-interest totes, and beyond that defined the past decade-plus of fashion and culture.

For our purposes, we’ve roughly identified the Yeezus tour in 2013 as the Big Bang from which the modern merch movement emerged—but let’s begin with a couple of immediate precursors that primed the pump for all the hysteria that followed.

Max Fish “Jeremy Lin” T-Shirt (2012)

In the spring of 2012, just as Linsanity was sweeping NYC’s five boroughs and the country at large, the Lower East Side hotspot Max Fish tapped the artist Andrew Kuo to whip up this cheeky graphic depicting the Knicks sharpshooter throwing back a cold one. The tees became inescapable in Downtown New York for months, proving the potential for even neighborhood bars to capitalize on big cultural moments through timely merch drops. —Yang-Yi Goh

October’s Very Own x Nepenthes “No New Friends” T-Shirt (2012)

Drake would go on to make more noise in the merch realm—his post–Meek Mill beef “Revenge” hoodies from 2016 jump to mind—but in terms of pure cool, it’s impossible to top this highly limited collab with New York’s most righteous menswear boutique. It was a harbinger of even deeper ties between underground fashion and music memorabilia to come. —YG

Kanye West “Yeezus Tour” Collection (2013)

In the merch pantheon, there is everything that came before Kanye “Ye” West’s 2013 Yeezus tour, and there is everything that came after. The Yeezus merch was an unparalleled sensation. Designed by the Virgil Abloh–led Donda team and LA painter Wes Lang, the graphics were as sharp and provocative as Ye himself. Rather than merch, the whole thing felt more like a mini streetwear line, boosted by the growing fashion clout around Ye and the Kardashian-Jenner clan. Pretty soon it was ubiquitous, its exponential popularity sealed by the innovative idea to sell the merch at PacSun during the tour. All of a sudden, merch was more about a style sensibility than an experience, and soon enough every artist and clothing brand was trying to replicate the Yeezus formula, from retail distribution down to the gothic vibe. “It permeated culture in a way that was just not ever done before,” says Lang. Yeezus was the beginning of a modern merch movement, and, if you ask Lang, it was also a high point. “I'm partial because I made it,” he says, “but I never saw anything that was as good.” —Samuel Hine

Been Trill “Free Keef” T-Shirt (2013)

While Chicago rapper Chief Keef was serving a 60-day stint in juvenile detention for a probation violation, Virgil Abloh, Heron Preston, and Matthew Williams flexed their mega global influence as the hottest DJs-slash-graphic-tee-designers on the planet and honored him with this historic piece of merch. —Noah Johnson

Big Love Records T-Shirt (2013)

Los Angeles artist Cali Thornhill Dewitt’s bold typographic stylings have set many trends across the merch design universe, and perhaps none have had the impact of his Old English–style text treatments—which reached critical mass with Ye’s Life of Pablo gear in 2016. But before that, Thornhill Dewitt’s first foray into merch design came in the form of this tee for the celebrated Harajuku indie record shop Big Love. —NJ

032c “Remove Before Sex” Socks (2015)

In 2015, Joerg and Maria Koch, the founders of Berlin-based independent fashion magazine 032c, began selling socks printed with a simple, suggestive instruction. A couple of years later, Joerg could already see the writing on the wall. “I think the magazine will be rendered a P.S. note to the apparel—it's just like a fucking bulldozer,” he told GQ at the time. The bawdy socks were the most popular 032c product, and, thousands of pairs later, the Kochs evolved the magazine merch into a full-scale ready-to-wear brand that embodied their hard-core urban uniform. In January 2024, they held their first Paris Fashion Week runway show. —SH

Justin Bieber Purpose Tour Collection (2016)

For his globe-conquering 162-date Purpose world tour, Justin Bieber enlisted the visionary Fear of God designer Jerry Lorenzo to design both his onstage wardrobe and the accompanying merch. The latter featured flips on the Metallica and Thrasher logos, portraits of Bieber, and boldfaced lyrics (“MY MAMA DON’T LIKE YOU,” “MARK MY WORDS”) printed across everything from leather biker jackets and ripped jeans to sleeveless flannels and cropped hoodies. What made the Purpose tour gear truly omnipresent, though, was the way Bieber and Lorenzo managed to cover every tier of the market the way a major brand might: In addition to the mainline collection you could cop at the shows, there was a high-end capsule available only at Barneys, as well as an inexpensive diffusion line that hit the racks at H&M. —YG

Kanye West The Life of Pablo Collection (2016)

In 2016, Kanye West was the single most influential force in fashion. It wasn’t a new responsibility: For the better part of the decade, West used every public outing and step-and-repeat to assiduously shape the look of contemporary menswear. His cosign minted a new class of industry heavyweights; proximity to his orbit had a way of validating even the most amateurish CVs. With the release of The Life of Pablo, his fashion-world aspirations finally reached their apex.

In the months following TLOP’s debut, West began hawking album merchandise in stark, cavernous pop-up shops across the globe. To say it was a phenomenon is like calling Instagram, then six years old, a startup; the TLOP’s era bold, vaguely gothic typography—created in conjunction with the LA-based artist and frequent West collaborator Cali Thornhill Dewitt—became as ubiquitous as skinny jeans, threatening to overshadow the album itself. —Avidan Grossman

Our Legacy Work Shop T-Shirt (2016)

One of the ultimate IYKYK menswear grails of the modern era, this exclusive Work Shop tee can be purchased only at the brand’s flagship shop in Stockholm. Worth the trip to Sweden, IMO. —NJ

“In Loving Memory” Donda West/Robert Kardashian Airbrush T-Shirt (2016)

The lit-up atmosphere of Ye’s 2016 takeover of Madison Square Garden, where he copresented his Yeezy Season 3 fashion collection and his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo, remains exceedingly memorable. A monastic Ye in a Yeezus baseball cap and a red TLOP crewneck, jumping for joy around a laptop with Kid Cudi, Travis Scott, and Pusha T. The slew of Yeezy-clad models on a theatrical raised stage, standing in staunch Vanessa Beecroft formation. All of the Kardashian-Jenner women (even a freshly divorced Kris and Caitlyn) dressed up in glittering taupes and rose-pink furs from Olivier Rousteing’s Balmain.

At the MSG event, Ye sold limited-edition airbrushed tribute T-shirts featuring portraits of his late mother, Donda, on the front and his then-wife Kim Kardashian’s late father, Robert Sr., on the back. (Talk about a piece of Americana!) The airbrush artist, Alan Pastrana—who reportedly had to deliver the artwork on an overnight turnaround—once told Nylon that he “almost didn’t do the job” because he didn’t want "to be known as the guy who did the designs on Kanye’s shirt.” The rest is history. —Eileen Cartter

Chrome Hearts x Off-White Tee (2016)

It was inevitable that Virgil Abloh’s name would appear in several entries on this list. Chrome Hearts has been the Hollywood elite’s rock-and-roll jewelry of choice for decades now, but Abloh’s cosign sent the brand skyrocketing into a new era of hype and prestige. This collaboration tee was part of a 16-piece, 16-city capsule collection from 2016. —NJ

MoMA x New York Yankees Baseball Cap (2017)

In the merchiest city on earth, the MoMA x Yankees ball cap stands above the rest as our time’s quintessential NYC souvenir. It’s “a piece of New York,” says Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Since 2017, when the cap hit the gift shop to accompany the Antonelli-curated exhibition Items: Is Fashion Modern?, the MoMA Design Store has sold over 200,000 Yankees bills, with spikes during the pandemic and after, once tourists began returning to the city. Antonelli attributes this blockbuster success to the beautiful juxtaposition of the two iconic Big Apple institutions. “Nothing gets more New York than having the Yankees cap with the MoMA logo also on it,” she says. “It's just the perfect combo.” —SH

Some Ware “Fashion Week” T-Shirt (2017)

In 2015, Some Ware founders Brendan Fowler and Cali Thornhill DeWitt poured kerosene on the graphic T-shirt market with their line of trippy art-house tees. But the purest expression of their MO arrived a couple of years later, when the duo's fashion week send-up wooed the exact targets of its ribbing. It might’ve started as an in-joke among gallery kids skeptical of outside encroachment, but these days its canny anticipation of the tawdry art world/fashion industry dalliance just looks prophetic. —AG

Online Ceramics x Dead & Co. Hoodie (2017)

Since launching Online Ceramics with a handful of Grateful Dead bootlegs in 2016, Elijah Funk and Alix Ross have built their irreverent side hustle into a zeitgeisty fashion empire. These days, the LA-based duo’s phone rings anytime the likes of André 3000, A24, or The North Face need wavy custom clothes, but back when John Mayer solicited this hoodie design to commemorate Dead & Co’s fall 2017 US tour, Funk and Ross were still decidedly underground, their collaborations entirely unofficial. Mayer had heard about Online Ceramics through the Deadhead grapevine, and he became obsessed with their singularly spooky and immersive riffs on the jam band’s iconography. When they made and hand tie-dyed this tribute to Dead lullaby “Brokedown Palace,” it was the biggest drop of Funk and Ross’s nascent merch career, but they didn’t sell it online—the only way to get one was to meet up with them in person. After much DM’ing, I found them in the back of a Frye Boots store in SoHo and gave them a wad of cash for a couple hoodies. Mayer wore his onstage throughout the fall, and Online Ceramics was officially on the map. —SH

Supreme “Brooklyn Store Opening” T-Shirt (2017)

By the time Supreme cut the ribbon of its Brooklyn flagship in 2017, the once-scrappy skate label was already a billion-dollar powerhouse. But that didn’t stop new and old heads alike from mobbing the airy Williamsburg outpost in anticipation of the real draw: the box logo tee that Supreme releases each time it opens a new store. Even by Supreme standards, box logo tees (or “bogos,” in forum parlance) inspire a staggering degree of demand, and the Brooklyn-specific version arrived at an especially precarious moment for the brand. That same week, a sprawling private equity giant had taken a 50% stake in the label, prompting questions surrounding what, exactly, Supreme would sacrifice for its new shareholders, and how much of its cool factor might be lost in the process. When the Brooklyn bogo sold out as quickly as expected, Wall Street types must’ve felt a small measure of reassurance—at least until their teenage kids asked them to track one down. —AG

Worldnet Hoodie (2017)

Think of this as the smarter, sexier younger brother of the equally hyped DHL tee that Vetements sent down the runway a year prior. At the peak of merchmania, designers and celebrities alike were roping in all manner of branded clothes to represent every facet of their lives. The Worldnet hoodie was catnip for the ultimate fashion insider: a nod to a shipping logistics company that specializes in luxury fashion and retail. The piece truly took off when Frank Ocean sported the bright-blue version—before later releasing a black special edition himself. —Cam Wolf

Colette x Cactus Plant Flea Market T-Shirt (2017)

Colette, the beloved Parisian boutique run by mother-daughter duo Colette Roussaux and Sarah Andelman, was groundbreaking by any measure. So when the store announced it would shutter in 2017, the news was heralded as the end of an era. Where else would bedraggled industry types go to ogle its signature mix of big-name and bleeding-edge designers—or gulp down an espresso in between shows? As a last hurrah, Andelman released one final token of the Colette magic: a tie-dye graphic tee spun up in collaboration with Cactus Plant Flea Market, a fitting adieu to the concept store that birthed the genre. —AG

Wolfgang Tillmans x Tate Modern T-Shirt (2017)

Whether or not you visited German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans’s 2017 exhibition at the Tate Modern, the shirts that hit the gift shop are undeniable grails of minimalist merchandise design. At the time, graphic tee visionary Virgil Abloh would tell people this pink version was the T-shirt of the year. —SH

Travis Scott “Astroworld Tour” Collection (2018)

Travis Scott was at his absolute merchiest during the Astroworld era. During the long tail of his third album cycle, Scott customized Reese’s Puffs cereal boxes, cooked up his own McDonald’s meal, and collaborated with a slew of big-name designers. Scott masterminded his merch rollout, treating his record promo like its own streetwear line through limited drops and city-specific releases, like the coveted I Heart NY tee spun up with Scott’s trademark cacti and flames. —CW

Elara Cap (2018)

Before Elara Pictures—the production company founded by nouveau-auteur brothers Josh and Benny Safdie—produced its crown jewel, Uncut Gems, in 2019, it produced this merch hat. The cap, with its retro logo patch, became a niche sensation. Pete Davidson wore it while he discussed his recent engagement to Ariana Grande on Jimmy Fallon back in 2018, and it was later seen on other members of Elara’s film-buff orbit including Timothée Chalamet and EmRata, whose ex-husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, was formerly an Elara partner. —EC

Antwerp Tourist Hoodie (2018)

For Demna’s first Vetements collection, the designer trawled through Antwerp’s many tourist gift shops to source hoodies to be deconstructed and turned into rare and covetable pieces of fashion. This particular design must have been one of his favorites, as it was reworked in various ways for the label’s Autumn-Winter 2018 collection. —NJ

Chateau Marmont T-Shirt (2018)

In 2018, Gucci put a Chateau Marmont laundry bag (along with other essentials) on the runway. But the best time and place to get Chateau gear remains when you’re checking out of André Balazs’s storied Hollywood playpen. —SH

The Paris Review Hat (2018)

How do you turn a well-regarded literary quarterly into a highbrow merch destination? Why, you make a logo-embroidered dad cap, of course—and then have it be worn by the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Emily Ratajkowski. The Paris Review has only ramped up its merch output since. —EC

Condé Nast Bootleg Hoodie (2018)

In early 2018, a black hoodie embroidered with the Condé Nast logo appeared on a nondescript Shopify site. The unsanctioned work of—allegedly—a couple of West Coast Stüssy collaborators, the bootlegs were swiftly cease-and-desisted from the Internet. But not before several Condé employees snuck in their orders. —SH

Vampire Weekend x Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar T-Shirt (2019)

In merch as in music, there are deep cuts—and then there are cuts so deep you need an excavator to reach them. Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar is a Minnesota institution, a cookie empire run by Martha Rossini Olson that bakes 3 million hot chocolate chip cookies per day at the Minnesota State Fair—and has been at it since 1979. This ultra-rare release from Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride album era was sold only at the band’s Twin Cities shows in 2019; 150 were sold, and proceeds went to the St. Paul Public Library System. Very sweet indeed. —NJ

Glossier Hoodie (2019)

In its heyday, Glossier had all the makings of a great streetwear brand. Customers waited in massive lines to get into its SoHo boutique, and the brand’s signature sans-serif wordmark was just as covetable as a box logo in certain circles. And while the skincare giant’s primary business was in face wash and eyebrow-styling products, its merch line—highlighted by this soft pink hoodie—was perennially sold out and even reached celebrities like Timothée Chalamet. —CW

Frank Ocean “Blonded” T-Shirt (2019)

In the years since his 2016 classic Blonde, just about any output from the reclusive Frank Ocean—be it a new episode of his Apple Music radio show, a truncated Coachella performance, or the launch of his jewelry line Homer—makes serious waves online. That’s especially true of the intermittent surprise drops from his merch line Blonded, which turns out baggy soccer shorts, art prints, and these hotly desired logo tees. —YG

Online Ceramics x A24 x Elara Uncut Gems T-Shirt (2019)

Few studios have done more to push movie merch forward than A24—especially with regard to its potent collaborations with Online Ceramics, which began with a spooky series of Hereditary tees in 2018. But the linkup’s high-water mark came a year later, with a vibey collection of Uncut Gems gear that paid tribute to the gemstone that sends Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner down a dark and twisted odyssey. According to Elijah Funk and Alix Ross of Online Ceramics, the Gems design was one of the most popular of the 1,400-1,500 tees they’ve released thus far. —YG

GQ “Keanu Reeves” T-Shirt (2019)

Quite possibly the most exclusive piece of merch on this list! Made in honor of our May 2019 cover star Keanu Reeves, this tee was reserved only for GQ’s friends and family. This one, in particular, was tie-dyed by GQ global editorial director Will Welch himself. Who says print (or merch) is dead? —CW

Phoebe Bridgers Punisher Skeleton Sweatpants (2020)

When it dropped in June 2020, Phoebe Bridgers's Punisher instantly became the moody, lo-fi soundtrack of the pandemic for a legion of trapped-at-home fans. And while she was it, the musician was also kind enough to offer those fans a moody new pandemic uniform: a pair of cozy sweats emblazoned with her signature skeleton motif and her name across on the rear. Naturally, the latter feature led dozens of buyers to post suggestive bottom shots on Instagram—many of which Bridgers gleefully shared on her Stories. —YG

Come Tees “Rage Against the Machine” Bernie Sanders T-Shirt (2020)

Few pieces of political merch still rouse like the “Rage Against the Machine” Bernie Sanders tee, which features a Xeroxed-looking version of the Vermont senator’s 1991 congressional photo. It was produced by the arty cult label Come Tees, founded by the Los Angeles artist Sonya Sombreuil, during Sanders’s second run at the presidency four years ago. “I’ve had a lot of reservations about using this space to talk about politics,” Sombreuil wrote on Instagram at the time. “Take hold of this moment. We may not have another window in our lifetimes.”

Merch stalwart and longtime Bernie fan Emily Ratajkowski wore hers on the cover of British GQ in 2020, and again when she cast her vote for Sanders in that year’s Democratic primary. Come Tees still sells the shirt online, with $15 of every sale going toward a rotating mutual-aid fund. —EC

Shrits “Alice Neel” Cap (2021)

The Shrits homies, artist Andrew Kuo and Broadway gallery boss Pascal Spengemann, have been bootlegging artist homages since 2018, making hats and tees as tributes to beloved artists like Monet, Georgia O’Keefe, and Mark Rothko. The Alice Neel cap, released around the time of her blockbuster retrospective at The Met, is one of their greatest hits. —NJ

Ikea Bucket Hat (2021)

Bookcases, bed frames…and bucket hats? By 2021, merch culture had become so pervasive that even big-box stores like Ikea were getting in on the action—and these electric blue chapeaus, made from the same indestructible material as the Swedish chain’s iconic bags, wound up selling like hotcakes. —YG

Sally Rooney “Beautiful World, Where Are You” Tote Bag (2021)

In the run-up to the release of Irish writer Sally Rooney’s third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, the book’s publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux did a cheeky bit of marketing: It made merch. The Rooney wares, which included a graphic tote bag and a sunshine-yellow bucket hat (aka the hypebeast’s accessories of choice), were never mass-produced; they were gifted to a select few literati tastemakers. BookTok was still on the rise and literary status merch was not yet standard in the publishing world, but it kicked off a trend of pub houses making in-the-know memorabilia to generate buzz. —EC

Uncle Paulie’s Hoodie (2022)

It was early 2022. Pete Davidson was months away from retiring after his eight-year run on Saturday Night Live. He was newly dating Kim Kardashian, and they were going on double dates with Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez at Giorgio Baldi. The King of Staten Island was in full-on Los Angeles mode.

The night he fortuitously ran into Martha Stewart at—where else?—Nobu Malibu, Pete was doubling up on LA merch from local sandwich shop Uncle Paulie’s, a key player in the pandemic-led restaurant-merch boom of the early 2020s. “I couldn’t ask for somebody nicer to be rocking my shit,” Uncle Paulie’s co-founder Paul James told GQ at the time. Can’t get more Hollywood than that. —EC

Off-White x Nike Air Force 1 “Brooklyn Museum” (2022)

The late, great Virgil Abloh was not one to rest on his laurels. He was also keenly attuned to the exclusionary nature of the fashion industry, and made a life’s work out of exploding the barriers that prevented others from engaging with it. So when the Brooklyn Museum debuted “Figures of Speech," a posthumous retrospective of the designer’s oeuvre, the security guards working the exhibit were equipped with a classic Ablohian flourish: slime-green Nike Air Force 1s, remixed as part of his smash-hit collaboration with the Swoosh. Museum guards, curator Antwaun Sargent told GQ at the time, are often overlooked, and Abloh had “decided that he wanted to make sure that they were very much a part of the exhibition.” Fans eager to score a pair of their own would be disappointed, but as consolation they could swing by the show’s cheekily named “Church and State” shop, a nod to Abloh’s long-standing obsession with elevating the quotidian—graphic tees, water bottles, area rugs—to the museum-worthy. Few designers have done more to bolster merch’s status since. —AG

I <3 Zack Bia Hoodie (2022)

When Zack Bia went on tour with Post Malone in 2022, the DJ, record exec, nightlife guru, and all-around figure of cultural fascination whipped up these hoodies and brought them on the road. To rep your obsession with the “It Girl King,” you had to slip past the proverbial velvet rope: Bia gave most of them away to friends and family. —SH

Fanelli Cafe Merchandise (2022)

Ask the owners of Fanelli Cafe to point you toward the most popular item on the menu, and they might recommend the steak frites. But for newer patrons of the centuries-old SoHo institution—who flock to the corner of Prince and Mercer to flirt, gossip, or wait out the line at the Prada store—Fannelli’s hottest item isn’t edible: It’s wearable. Short of wrapping yourself in one of the restaurant’s checkerboard tablecloths, its graphic-laden hoodies and tees are the quickest way to tell a date you know the right guy at the right door—and will probably request a fit pic before you saunter in. —AG

Louis Vuitton x Something in the Water Hoodie (2023)

Just two months after Pharrell was appointed the men’s creative director of Louis Vuitton, the label dropped a capsule with the multihyphenate’s annual Something in the Water music festival in Virginia. The line included tees, hoodies, and a checkered denim jacket, all of which featured graphics that bridged Pharrell’s two worlds: his new domain of Parisian luxury fashion and his hometown of Virginia Beach. —CW

Waystar Royco Hoodie (2023)

HBO now maintains a cottage industry of faux-corporate merch for all its shows about bad-guy plutocrats, but it all started with Succession and this bleak Waystar Royco swag. But don’t you think that, of everyone in the Succession universe, the only character who would actually wear a Waystar hoodie is Cousin Greg? Also, as seen on Harry Styles. —EC

André 3000 x Cactus Plant Flea Market “Listen to Sade” T-Shirt (2023)

When you’re one of the most stylish musicians of all time and you’re dropping your first record in nearly two decades, you’re all but required to come correct in the merch department. Unsurprisingly, André 3000 nailed the assignment, tapping Cactus Plant Flea Market’s Cynthia Lu to spin up an epic array of tees and sweats—including this highlight with some unimpeachable advice across the front—in support of his solo debut New Blue Sun. —YG

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Set Design by Suzy Zietzmann

Special thanks to Raymond Ang, Zack Bia, Daria Di Lello, Bowen Fernie, Emily Greenhouse, Christopher Guzman, Chloe Hall, Samuel Hine, Noel Howard, Noah Johnson, Georgia Kinsley, PJ Monte, Antwaun Sargent, Supreme, Brandon Tan, Louis Vuitton, Will Welch, and Jake Woolf

Originally Appeared on GQ

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