A Decade of Plastered: All-Time Top Selling Designs from Beijing's Iconic T-Shirt Brand

It hardly seems possible that Plastered T-shirts is turning 10 years old, but that's the case. From its humble origins as a hole-in-wall shop in the then-moribund Nanluogu Xiang of 2006, it's grown into a mini-empire, spawned innumerable competitors and helped elevate the alley into the artistic and commercial juggernaut it is today.

On the occasion of its first decade in business, we asked founder Dominic Johnson-Hill to give us a list of their 10 top selling T-shirts. Just like Nigel Tufnel's amp, Johnson-Hill's Top Ten list goes to 11.

"Ten years ago we opened the first creative store on Nanluo,"  Johnson-Hill reminisces. "Since then we’ve produced near 250 unique pieces of artwork that have sold around the world and been in galleries and museums."

Here are their top 10 11 designs since the shop's founding in 2006 ... several are still in stock, while others have been discontinued. If you've got one of the discontinued designs, guard it with your life (or put it on Taobao for RMB 2,500):
 

1. Magic 8
"A simple design that came out in 2008, about the time we saw our customer base change from foreign to Chinese. It still sells today."
 

2. Subway Ticket (discontinued)
"This design changed the direction of the brand from contempory bizarre women on beaches to iconic Chinese design, it all started with this, our first bestseller in 2006."
 

3. Lei Feng 8 (discontinued)
"We made a stained glass window out of a Lei Feng image and hung it in our shop. It was so well received by the media that we made it in to a Tee too. Released in 2009."
 

4. Monkey King 2
"This is a classic commercial East-meets-West design that has flown off the shelves since we released it in 2014."
 

5. Women Can Be Heroes
"Taken from a poster from the 1970s about the one-child policy, this became a gift that guys bought for the ladies and vice versa. Released in 2007."
 

6. Tattoo (discontinued)
"I ran in tattoo artist Wang Ke eating chuanr one day on Beiluogu Xiang. That was the start of something incredible, as the tattoo artwork we did together ended up on a tee, on Zippo lighters and in art galleries. This is the first, where revolutionary ballet meets Beijing tattoo."
 

7. Mother F*cker in CBD (discontinued)
"In 2014 we conceptualized an exhibition with Beijing artist Li Buolin called Comic Beijing, taking traditional comic book artwork and giving it a Beijing twist. The exhibition was a quiet success and the artwork from it appealed to our young Chinese audience."
 

8. Monkey See
"In 2016 we started collaborating with more overseas artists. This Year of the Monkey design we worked on with Biggi from Venezuela, and its been a huge hit."
 

9. Beijing Xiao Niu
"We released this to coincide with the smoking ban in Beijing, and were promptly told to take it out of our window display."
 

10. Second-Hand Drugs (discontinued)
"A simple design we took from an illegal advert sticker from a footbridge. It has our telephone number on it, and since I wore it on a popular TV show, the number hasn’t stopped ringing."
 

11. Great Wall (discontinued)
"This was a our first-ever design – in fact, the brand started with this idea and its probably our worst-selling design to date. I had to stick in at number 11 as its was partly responsible to the modern development of Nanluogu Xiang as this design helped launch the first ever creative store on the street."

Images courtesy of Plastered