Old Tees: 99 Red Luftballoons

Haruki Murakami did a long running column on Popeye Magazine, where he shared his stories behind his different t-shirts that he had. I thought I could do something similar, and maybe just to give myself a good time to say good bye to some of my things from my youth.


99 Red Luftballoons – Bought from Threadless.com

I had gotten this T-shirt when I was 16-17. Not my first Threadless T-shirt, but we’ll get to that one in due time. The graphic was based on the song, 99 Red Balloons by Nena. At that time, the song was also still in my head from the movie, The Wedding Singer. There was an opening portion introducing the character Julia (Drew Barrymore), and she was listening to that song on headphones.

I remember wearing this t-shirt so many times at one point, and always remembering the song as I put it on. The song itself is a real ear worm, and it just stuck in my head. I had ordered this when I was already studying Graphic Design in Temasek Design School / Temasek Polytechnic. The song was really just a part of me that remembered my childhood watching the movie, and the bits of the song coming on. The movie itself came out when I was 9 or 10, and I remember watching it over and over again, because we had the VCD.

Another memory of this was when my mother had painted a glass bottle, inspired by this red balloons. She would also try to count to see if the designer did place 99 red balloons on the t-shirt graphic. It’s quite hard to explain, but I think memories like that make it hard for me to give or throw this t-shirt out.

Right now, Clarice wears this shirt more often than I do. Not that I don’t like it, but I guess it fits her vibe for a t-shirt to wear comfortably at home.


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