It seems that mental health has always been a no-no when it comes to general conversation. You can say you are crazy about snowboarding, football mad, you can say your job is driving you insane, you can use the words, but never play out the actions. Until now.

Loony Bin T-Shirt

General society has until recently treated mental illness like an infection, don’t talk to mad people or you will end up exactly the same way, talking about god knows what conspiracies, impossible tales of impossible deeds. But funny enough it seems that all you normal people out there have accidentally embraced lunacy without realizing it.

I’ve had my turns, it’s true, I’ve suffered from manic depression, I’ve had suicidal friends, a lot of well-meaning straights would love to blame the drug culture, but when you take a closer look, you have to blame culture, nothing more than that.

Noise drives people crazy. City dwellers beware, noise does screw you up. The reason there’s so much noise these days isn’t just a matter of over-population, it’s the fact that everyone wants to make more noise. Their phones, their cars, their offices, their homes, their lives are noisy. Their friends are noisy, their bosses are noisy. Why do you think so many retire early from the Stock Market?

I met a retired stockbroker once, he was in his late twenties, he was jumping up and down in the train carriage as I played a stupid little Casio synth I was absorbed by at the time. He came over, wiping what seemed to be coke from his nose and grabbed it. He offered me double its worth in cash, I accepted, he didn’t have any cash. We laughed and he told me to play my junk, I just made it up and he stared out the window contemplating.

He started to recall his life, almost as if to no one in particular, he had made millions from junk bonds or god knows what, and blew almost all of it on coke parties. He told me I was better off out of it. I took the advice to heart. The point is this guy was no different than any crazy I’d met at The Priory. He had his nervous twitches, his pharmaceutical love of white powder, and a tendency to place his conversation in the context of the earth and the human race, rather than an individual one.

Look at TV and film these days, I’ve always loved the tools of Sci-fi, not so much the gadgets as the endless conveyor belt of what if’s, it seems that everything I see has appropriated the predictive nature of that once cult format. It seems that most celebrities are now officially a little crazy, some more than others. It seems the same can be said for scriptwriters too. To me it’s all old hat, I’ve been mad for years so I and many of my crazy friends from times gone by are prepared.

If you think normality still exists, you are outnumbered. Originality is such a sought after commodity now, that no matter the market, medium, or craft, no matter how little sense it makes, if people like it, it’s a roaring success. The point is sanity has become boring. People try to escape the cold harsh light of reality everyday. Women who let advertisers fool them into believing in eternal youth and beauty. The promise of wealth. The illusion of sophistication and glamour. Take a ride into space for $20m and wonder what it’s all about. Smoke a doobie and wonder how you are going to make that much money in the first place.

The lunatics escaped from the asylum a long time ago, they run the media, the government, the corporations, they design your clothes, paint your art, start wars, sell reconverted asylums as executive apartments with panoramic views, they’re everywhere. Get used to it.

Welcome! At last Retro God has its own blog, and I’ve a lot of work ahead of me. Let me introduce myself, I’m Paul Baines, a UK based fashion designer, and I am Retro God! OK, perhaps a bit presumptuous, but it caught your eye, or you wouldn’t be here. Now, I’m not your usual T-Shirt designer (god bless them, one and all ;p ) - I’m not a design snob - well, perhaps I am - but I do come from a very different background than your usual pick. Way back in the early 90’s I graduated with a Ba Hons in Conceptual Arts & Design.

Now you may ask what the hell is it? Good question, and one I’m still trying to answer myself. Take a peek at Marcel Duchamp, there’s a great start, work your way along the arts time-line, looking for the freaks and you’ll find yourself in Andy Warhol’s Factory. Keep going, there’s Jeff Koons, and hey how about chucking in Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin for good measure. They, however much they might deny it, are all conceptual artists. Right… so why fashion, why mass-made, why the on line store? Why not a gallery? Why not? It seems the greatest gallery system in the world is right here and it’s on line.

It’s my site, it’s yours, it’s every forum and blog out there. I was taught to artistically justify every idea, every action, every piece. I’m still doing it now. In fact, that’s just about the best reason to blog every design I’ve created. I am using the medium of kitsch, of mass production, to subvert social comment, to disable the enabler, inject discourse with street style philosophies, pour them back into the streets via fashion, thereby intensifying further debate on line.

A wonderful loop, something I’m fascinated by, the entropy of discourse. This may all seem very high and mighty for a lowly t-shirt designer, but in all honesty, I try to maintain a low-brow veneer for all my designs, this increases the effectiveness of the subversion.

Take a look at the designs and perhaps you’ll get a clearer idea of my overall line of inquiry. Using common sayings and urban myths, everyday people with unglamorous lives, utilitarian objects, word play and surrealist effect, to convey the current Zeitgeist of the most psychologically damaged culture in history.