Dress You Up

How It is this T-shirt at right? It is It, It, It, I tell ya, so get one in every style and every color. Now. Between the shirts I’m about tell you all about, the new Robin Thicke CD, and a bunch of concerts and movies on schedule, I have my summer essentials all lined up.

Miami Beach designer Paul Jacober has reinvented the T-shirt. Yeah, you probably didn’t know this was possible, but then again you’re reading this and not designing anything, so what do you know.

I’m feeling very Nicole Richie on The Simple Life – I just had two chocolate brownies; not that she would – so go with it.

Seriously, though, the T-shirt, one of the world’s most iconic fashion statements, has gotten the Miami treatment courtesy of Jacober. He recently launched his own label of graphic tees – simply named paul jacober; do you love it? – initially turning to Miami Beach for inspiration.

“It just bothered me that there were no cool shirts that represented the great hotels in town…the beach – they’re all horrible,” he said. “So I set out to immortalize some of the architecture here in an effortlessly cool manner, placing the imagery off-center in an abstract sort of way.”

Jacober combined these landmarks in his first Florida Series of T-shirts with oversized flower and trompe l’oeil ocean imagery, creating colorful slices of Miami living on soft cotton crew- and V-neck tees.

His second collection – a darker and grittier Davie line inspired by a Bruce Weber portfolio – combined horses and jockeys, oranges, skulls, 18-wheelers, and fast cars and motorcycles. His most recent collection – The Never Mind Roses Series – will be available soon, and is a salute to many things British (think Union Jacks on Victorian toile; it’s that sexy).

“You can wear my shirts during the day at the beach or out and about, or underneath a blazer to dinner at night,” he said. “They’re cool and they’re fun.”

Fun, they are. Yeah, I like when people design T-shirts; I think it’s kind of cool. And I love it.

Photo: PaulJacober.com.