Overview
POPOHARDWEAR - T shirts and culture history
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries T-shirts are a most accessible and widely worn type of clothing. They may appear to be ordinary everyday garments, seemingly insignificant in the regions material culture. However, T- shirts and the images that appear on them often lay claim to culture, imagination, history and places. They are an inexpensive and mass-produced form of clothing that is sometimes used like a canvas for artists to promote their causes, ideas and identities.
Statements of Pride and Identity
These T-shirts were made by artist Siliga David Setoga of POPOHARDWEAR. Using a mock dictionary format, he has come up with a historically accurate yet humorous definition for ‘freshy’. Like ‘fob’, freshy is a derogatory term used to describe new arrivals to New Zealand from the Pacific Islands. The expressions come from the shipping term fob (‘free on board’ or ‘freight on board’) and its informal interpretation ‘fresh off the boat’, often used by traders to refer to fruit imported from the Pacific Islands. Another derogatory term used by Pacific T-shirt designers is ‘bunga’ - a racist expression for a person of colour, especially a Pacific Islander. By reworking these put-downs in a humorous way, Setoga and other T-shirt designers turn them into statements of pride and identity.
History and Place
Some T-shirts draw on the historical importance of place to Pacific migrants to New Zealand. ‘Bungaz N The Hood: Homage to Ponsonby’ and ‘Grey Lynn: The Original Fob Mecca’ are slogans that acknowledge the two Auckland suburbs where most Pacific migrants settled during the 1950s and 1970s. Other T-shirts pay homage to Otara and Mangere, twenty-first-century suburbs in Manukau City with large populations of Pacific Island people.Setoga has also reworked commercial symbols and slogans in his designs. One example is ‘Fob Power - Outstanding on the Football Field, the Factory Floor, and the Footpath Brawl’ (inspired by a laundry-powder brand); others include ‘Freshy, I’m got to be good for you!’ (inspired by a well-known fruit juice slogan), and ‘Kalo & Fried Corned-beef’ (inspired by the Kentucky Fried Chicken - KFC - brand).
There are many other T-shirt designers throughout the Pacific region who work in a similar way, decorating a global form of clothing in a distinctive local style, cleverly combining popular urban culture with Pacific heritage, values and humour.