Retro Fabrics Promise You the Future

Our retro line really recalls the very best of 1950’s graphics. The 50s weren’t all hip and cool – like most decades, even the 50’s fabric was dominated by florals. But when a designer did diverge, what a marvelous thing it was!

You can see the history of florals in some retro prints – but now the floral motifs are reinterpreted as amoebid blobs, highly stylized leaves and flowers that start to seem mechanical. In contrast, often mechanical and scientific figures – TVs, airplanes, antennae, tubes, atomic symbols - are drawn as biomorphic – given the contours and lines related to flora and fauna. Take the famous 50’s graphic design of the boomerang – it originated as a reinterpretation of the delta wing jet aircraft, but it flings across the fabric like a living thing.

Fabulous Fabrics of the 50s (and Other Terrific Textiles of the 20s, 30s, & 40s) by Gideon Bosker (Author), Michele Mancini (Author), John Gramstad (Author), Bruce Beaton (Photographer) (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0811835200/ref=ord_cart_shr/104-6780178-3390323?%5Fencoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance) contains several pages of authentic fabric that clearly originated our own collection. This book attributes the sources of inspiration, or in some cases the very designs themselves to modern artists Jean Arp, Joan Miro and Harry Bertoia. For samples of their work:

Jean Arp – Strasbourg born sculptor – retrospectives of his artwork were being held in the 50s. http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_works_8_0.html
Joan Miro, a Spanish surrealist painter and sculptor
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_works_109_0.html
Harry Bertoia Italian-born American Abstract Sculptor and Designer, 1915-1978
http://bertoiaharry.com/sculptures.html

It is regrettable that Fabulous Fabrics of the 50s contains only a few pages of retro fabrics, and probably less than 1/3rd of the book contains 50s fabrics at all! Most of the book is dominated by florals from the 20s, 30s and 40s in order to trace the evolution of the 50's floral design.


The 1950s embodied an exciting post-war utopia built on a new scientific and mechanical frontier. The exhilarating new iconography embodied this dynamism that represented the promise of a new future. Wear one of our retro shirts and represent that very dream.

It’s Quiet Here in Space

Yes, the Robots have been off-line as far as blogging goes for a while. It’s kind of like we’ve been holding our breath, waiting to find out if we’re going to make it into Comic-Con as a vendor or not. A lot of marketing strategy relied on meeting our target audience there.

And the outlook is bad. It seems that this is only the 2nd year that Comic-con has sold out it’s booth space. First time vendors are basically screwed, and return vendors have not sent in as many cancellations as the Comic-con staff first predicted. Robots in Orbit is one of 19 vendors on a waiting list- they won't tell me my actual # in line. This is because I think they want to pick and choose who they invite as the cancels come in so they control which new vendors join the floor.

The staff told us to call back in 3 weeks. We can also try contacting vendors who did get booths to find out if anyone wants to lease us part of their space, but if you’ve been to Comicon I’m sure you’re thinking that that is pretty unlikely.

Sigh. More on Comic-con later.


Colmmander bot out.

La Loteria

Several years ago I held a Halloween/Day of the Dead party and strung up postcards of El Diablo and El Muerte, authentic folkart cards from the Mexican deck of La Loteria. I remember thinking that these would make great figures on a shirt for my husband.

I practically jumped up and down in my seat when I came across fabulous fabric featuring 24 of the La Loteria cards! I almost wanted to take credit for comming up with the idea years ago!

La loteria is an old game of chance played throughout Mexico originating back in the eighteenth century. It is in fact, Bingo – but played with symbols rather than numbers. As in Bingo, players receive cards with 16 symbols on it, while a caller pulls out cards from 54 different symbols. As the cards are being called out, the first person to get four pictures in a row, either vertically, horizontally or diagonally sings out ¡LOTERIA, LOTERIA!

La loteria is still played at festivals and carnivals, still using the original 54 symbols drawn in that folkish style that makes many Americans think that they are fortune telling cards. But don’t let “bingo” deflate the mystery these cards inspire – in some areas, like Oaxaca, poetic verses are shouted out, for example:the devil"I'm the devil and I've arrivedalthough you can't see me;I haven't come to borrow,not even to eat."and the dandy:"Don Ferruco is a dandy,who wears an overcoat.and as he turned the cornerhe fell with his face into the mud."

Make up your own odd, suggestively illuminating brain teaser of a phrase when someone stops you in your La Loteria shirt and inquires about the meaning of particular card.

Here’s ours about The Watermelon

Eat a watermelon seed and find
A tiny would-be paradise
Poking your insides

Robots at Christmas

What did the Robots receive for Christmas?

Robot ornaments, of course. Thank you Aunt Nancy!

Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable holiday, whatever you celebrate and however you celebrated!

Follow the Dots

I was first introduced to Aboriginal art when I backpacked through Australia with my sister – oh, the college years! Even in Australia though, I never came across anything as cool as our 2 new Aboriginal shirts. Sure, you could get some Aboriginal X-ray art or Dot Dot art on a T-shirt, but they hadn’t incorporated the art into sophisticated fashion.

Aborginal art, like all native art, is symbolic and ritualistic, both in it’s execution and in the meaning behind the finished piece. Our shirts represent two of three styles of Aboriginal art. X-ray art, from the Northern Territory, displays “cross-sections” of animals – showing the animal’s skeleton and viscera. I painted my own X-ray Aboriginalesque art on the door in our den – featuring a kangaroo with her joey. X-ray is my favorite and our Skink and Frog shirt utilizes this style.

Dot painting creates symbols and patterns with dots, which according to one resource I read was heavily developed after the 1970s when Aboriginal artists wanted to protect their sacred art from outsiders and began to cover their symbolic paintings with dots which helped mask the original, sacred picture. I can’t comment on the credibility of that source, but it’s an interesting story. Our Sacred Snake print is done in the dot dot style.

The third style features stenciling objects, particularly handprints, and then creates patterns around these stencils.

It’s hard to find good reference material on Aboriginal art on the internet, which surprises me. Guess we’ll have to make a trip to our favorite Art & Architecture book store, Hennessey & Ingalls, in Santa Monica’s promenade.

Anyway, check out our Aboriginal shirts - designed by Aboriginal Artists, the fabric manufactured in Australia! That's authentic!

Quick orbital dispatch

The robots are quite busy with our holiday season and not blogging much, but I wanted to remind everyone that shipping deadlines for receiving shirts before Christmas are approaching.

UPS suggests the following dates as a cut-off for guaranteed delivery before Christmas
UPS Ground, Monday, Dec. 15th
2nd Day Air, Wednesday, Dec. 20th
Next Day Air, Thursday, Dec. 21st

USPS recommends the following
Priority Dec. 20th
Express Dec. 23th

Now, I'd subtract a few days from the rather optimistic USPS dates myself, just to be safe.

Happy Holidays everyone!

New shirts to whet the appetite

Especially because of issues like the previous post by Commanderbot, we don't know if we can get these 8 new shirts under the wire for Christmas. Best to make sure they're done correctly than rush something less than high-quality to market.

But when they do arrive, you can look forward to 3 new Asian Kanji designs, a beautiful Chinese Dragon on cream design, 2 Aboriginal dot dot pattern shirts for the Adventure collection, and 2 Retro geometric designs.

I'll try to get fabric sample pictures up soon.
--Designbot