Such meme-ing encapsulates something romantically middle school about Stylo’s designs. But then Sutton takes it one step further, hinting that the shirt references the Hard Rock Cafe restaurant chain, ditching its guitar iconography for an Apple logo. Peel it back another layer, and you realize that, well, hyperpop music is created and performed with the help of a laptop, so the reference makes sense. You initially double-take - the logo you recognize from one context is ripped from its typical techy white backdrop and recolored in snotty green, split by the eponymous text. Take Stylo’ s Hyper Pop Cafe as an example.

“We’ll think of the funniest thing to reference and connect it to something irrelevant, that’s also kind of relevant,” Michaud says. But when it comes to the designs, Michaud and Sutton go off instinct, and that often takes them to profound places. The fashion pieces embody that contrast of low and high fashion through ridiculous meme-like content splattered on a classic piece of menswear. He typed “pen in the ceiling” into Google Translate and voila. Sutton also had a memory from seventh grade when a fellow classmate showed him how to toss a pen so the point stuck perfectly into the ceiling. I thought it'd be a funny contrast, what the content was versus what the name was,” Michaud says. “I wanted it to sound like high fashion, something French or Italian.

Each new shirt felt more entrenched in the dizzying experience of scrolling through social media, where the line between genuine posts, memes and advertising blur.Įven the name Stylo au Plafond is dipped in irony. The pair dove headfirst into outsider humor, sketching eco-terrorist Sonic the Hedgehog, sexy Black Rock summer internship and the Utah Jazz/Raytheon Technologies hybrid that caught the eye of Lacy. Michaud and Sutton now scour local thrift stores for high-quality button-ups, clean and sanitize them and use waterproof fabric markers to etch their designs. The initial T-shirt poked fun at Marc Jacobs’ HEAVEN clothing line by replacing the logo with a two-headed hydra of cartoon dads Peter Griffin and Homer Simpson. Michaud and Sutton first made shirts for a going away party for Philadelphia band Joy Again, best known for the song “ Looking Out For You ,” who were embarking on a spring tour.

It was a rapid jump in exposure for a brand founded in April.

Guy pressing red button meme