On Wednesday, 10.29.2025, we will launch the second T-shirt from the Tibi Creative Lab, “The Moo Tee”. In providing context to the story of how this shirt came to be, I wanted to quickly recapitulate what these shirts are, and why we create them.
The TCL tees are time capsules, memorable moments and memories from our Tibi trips, shoots, and campaigns. Our first tee, “The Supper Tee”, was a printed film photo, a photo of that photo after wrinkling it by hand - a souvenir from our Resort 2025 campaign shoot in the woods of Greenwich, CT.
Our second TCL shirt, “The Moo Tee”, is a continuation of this creative direction, with an abstract twist. This past April, our creative team flew to Antwerp, Belgium to shoot what has been our Fall and 2025 Capsule campaigns in the city, and country, that largely inspired it all. Some of our favorite images, and moments, came from our second day of the trip when we drove about an hour outside of the city to Kasteeldomein Zellaer to shoot our 2025 Capsule in, and around, the majestic grounds. The castle, an environment characterized by a vast moat encircling the entire structure, is maintained by a lovely elderly couple who live in a small house on the outer edge of the moat. Elegance and class are the two words that come to mind when attempting to depict the feeling of being on the historic property.
During our break for lunch, I wandered off to a neighboring field where I discovered a herd of beautiful Belgian cows. I raced back to the castle to grab my camera, and our new Herbert Loafer and Somerset Flat, to capture the calm and happy creatures, and to shoot some impromptu still life of the pony hair printed shoe that would launch with our Fall ’25 Collection. Little did I know in that moment that these still-lifes would be repurposed down the line as editorials for marketing the shoes, nor that we would use the Belgian Blue cows as the inspiration for a TCL tee.
For our second shirt, we wanted to do something different from the Supper-T. What exactly that meant, we were quite unsure, but I knew that we wanted an element of creativity, by hand, that went further than our previous project. So, with that in mind, we printed out the cow image onto 24x16 matte paper. We found a range of beautiful colours from Farrow & Ball, and began to paint on top of the printed image. It wasn’t quite what we wanted, so we printed it again, and painted again. This time we were getting closer, but still not there yet. We took a photo of the printed, painted image, and began to draw over the image. Initial sketches were more refined.
I had an intuition for the colors we needed – soft shades of pink, blue, green, with hints of yellow. In trying to evoke the feeling of spring-time in this field of Belgian cows, these colors were the most apt translation of the emotion - the cows I met were kind and playful, the air was light and the sun soft, effortless even. Being along the wood fence of that pasture, I felt like a ten-year old, in a beautiful wonderland, and that is the ethos we wanted to portray through this tee. When you wear it, you are transported to this world of fun, color, and youth.
With this creative direction in mind, I took my initial sketches to Amy and Sarah. They understood the inspiration and the goal, but felt that something was lost between the creative and final sketch. It was too real. The lines were too sharp, the shading too precise. It needed to be less. Stripped down. Approached from the mind of the ten-year old I felt like in that pasture.
So I stripped it back, and re-presented the sketch.
Less they said.
So again, I stripped away.
Less, they said. Free your hand.
This process went on for a few days until, finally, we arrived at a graphic that was a culmination of what we all were looking for. Youthful, colorful, soft, gentle. I actually ended up drawing a few versions with my left hand to free up the lines.
The final graphic looks nothing like the original photo, but in so many ways is far more indicative of the story, of the feeling, and of what we see when we remember this time. We only produce 100 shirts per run because they are special, and because we will continue to create more. For contextual reasons, it is also important to note that these shirts take time, the process for this one began in June - it just wasn’t right until, well, it was. The Moo T will be available 10.29.25 at 11:00 a.m. EST on Tibi.com, until it’s not (a quick hint: the product page will be hidden, you must search “Moo Tee” to find it). I hope you get one, and if you can’t, don’t worry, we’ll be back shortly.