Fifteen years ago, no sane Manileño would be caught dead wearing a cheesily captioned souvenir shirt from Baguio, Davao or Palawan—those things were for (excuse the term) hicks or foreigners who didn’t know any better. If the locals wanted to wear a touristy shirt, they could just buy a Hard Rock shirt knockoff from the Greenhills tiangge (flea market). Ten years ago, people started wearing betterdesigned shirts bearing the name of their city of origin, from the “I (strawberry) Baguio”—a homage to Milton Glaser’s iconic “I (heart) NY,” to artistic/wacky creations from Island Spice t-shirts or Island Souvenirs.

Now, people aren’t just content to wear their heart on a sleeve, national pride can be found all over your shirt. From images of the Philippine archipelago, to shortened versions of destinations (“CEB”, “DVO”, “ILO”), it’s becoming fashionable to flaunt your city or country of origin. Take for example the Amazing Race Asia contestant Tisha Silang and her boyfriend Geoff. While they didn’t endear themselves to viewers with their brash winner-takes-all attitude, they certainly earned style points, especially when wearing Team Manila shirts that said “I (Rizal) PH.” And there’s Francis Magalona’s line of shirts called Three Stars and A Sun, which continue to sell well after the rap star’s demise—and spawned copycat brands if not imitation shirts.

Quirky Styles and Conversation Starters

From a consumer’s point of view, it’s easy to like Team Manila products. They have an online store, a Twitter account (@Team-Manila) and regularly send e-mail bulletins to customers alerting them of the latest sales and promos, apart from soliciting their opinions on upcoming collections with online surveys. Apart from that, their design sense is spoton, with their blend of street smarts, humor, whimsy, quirkiness and unapologetic love for country. Example: a limitededition coffee mug of theirs has an arrow pointing to the rim, and in Helvetica type says “sawsaw the pandesal here,” Taglish for “dunk your breakfast roll here.” Other home accessories include wall clocks, while personal accessories like wallets, bags, lanyards, wristlets, pins and belts sell like hotcakes, adorned as they are with silkscreened or printed graphics. If you want to measure a person’s level of addiction to these products, this writer knows someone with three wallets, seven TM shirts, five pins and a bag—not counting the ones bought to be given away as presents.

Grateful recipients of these gifts often find these conversation starters: the shirt enumerating several types of “silog” dishes you can have for breakfast; the wallet proclaiming “huy!” “ser!” “mam” and “barya lang po,” the bottlecap opener in the shape of (what else) the ubiquitous “tansan.” They’ve also gone into the creation of specialty brands: children’s sizes with Tiny Manila shirts and onesies with cute or cheeky captions; Daily Grind shirts for the musically inclined (also known as the “tugish takish” crowd); and the recently launched Ang Pambansang T-shirt, which had the energetic Carlos Celdran leading a crowd of happy bloggers and press people through a whirlwind tour of Intramuros, concluding it with a merienda buffet that featured halohalo and pritson as a DJ cranked out local tunes paying homage to Filipino culture.

Products also include special editions of “I am Ninoy” shirts that they’ve designed in collaboration with a local garment retail chain, or the visually busy creations of WeeWillDoodle on pins, belts, bags and lanyards. They even poke fun at graphic materials like “Keep Calm and Carry On” by replacing the words with “Hopia Mani at Pop Corn.”

Growing Operation

The enterprise has become so successful that the company moved its retail operations to a store on Jupiter Street in Bel-Air, while having the occasional warehouse sale at its headquarters in another Makati neighborhood (five minutes by tricycle). They soon opened a Rockwell store outlet at its Archaeology section and eventually moved to another area in the same mall to have more floor area and display space for its various wares, including cameras and accessories for Lomography enthusiasts. Somewhere in between that transition, they also opened outlets in Trinoma and at SM Mall of Asia, and moved their administrative offices to another area in the Bel-Air neighborhood—while inking distributorship deals with enthusiastic sellers who know that the Team Manila merchandise would sell quite well. Their wares are so popular that one plague they have to fight are the knockoffs of their bestsellers often found in Divisoria.

While some of their shirts are available at SM Kultura outlets, it doesn’t quite compare to the experience of soaking up the latest designs issued at a Team Manila store, where items are neatly displayed despite a profusion of goods, the staff wear previously issued designs and current OPM music plays (the decibel level depending on the staff on duty).

It comes as a shock that this youthful brand will be celebrating its tenth year soon, quite a milestone in the retail industry, especially when you consider how cheaper imitations have flooded the market. Still, Team Manila continues to appeal to buyers with their chutzpah and well-designed clothing items, one of the few to acknowledge that as a tropical country we can start wearing 100 percent cotton shirts, but in thinner, more durable forms that won’t broil the wearer. If your peso had to go to the local economy, you’d be better off getting a Team Manila shirt than something by David & Goliath, a foreign brand of equally cheekily themed shirts that border on the juvenile.

The Team Manila website states: “Since our foundation in 2001, we have striven to inspire and elevate the Filipino and the Philippines through art and creativity. We believe that graphic design is an agent of change, and by infusing local flavor into our designs, we inspire excellence, innovation, passion, nationalism, teamwork and optimism among the Filipino youth.” Checked on all counts, and carry on with the great work. Pinoy pride: 1 vs. Design apathy: 0. Go team!