Threadless Central

We felt pretty lucky on our Chicago visit, catching buses quickly, happening to visit the pricey Museum of Science and Industry on free day, stuff like that. Among our lucky moments was stumbling upon the new Threadless retail storefront, the first of its kind, on its opening morning (a few days before its Friday Grand Opening).

I didn't know a whole lot about this company other than hearing about it from time to time, but the clean, stylish, techo-savvy decor of the shop had me instantly smitten. Each T-shirt design was stacked beneath a sleek new flat-screen monitor displaying it on various models and in different shirt/hoodie styles.


The pièce de résistance would have to be the set-up that lets you photograph yourself inside the store, then run outside to see your face appear on a screen atop one of the T-shirts in the display window.




Not easy to see with the daylight reflection, but it was there!


On a more practical note, the store even has dressing rooms - kind of unusual for a place that only sells T-shirts, but such a good idea. At least for me, I would otherwise have chosen my shirt in the wrong size.

The staff was super friendly and understandably excited about the store's opening. (They gamely posed for the photo above, even after I told them it was for a blog that gets "as many as ten readers a day." Whoohoo, major press coverage!) They were handing out reusable Threadless shopping bags - bring it back next time, and you get a dollar off your purchase. If we'd still been in Chicago last Friday we also could have gotten free tickets to a concert at the Metro celebrating the grand opening.

So which shirt did I get? It was a lucky week, so I went with this one: the Luckiest T-Shirt Ever.