AUSTIN, Texas — Veteran-owned apparel company ValorThreads Frontline Mission Tee-riffic announced this week it would pivot away from merely producing the stupidest shirts anyone has ever seen and toward producing the stupidest shirts anyone has ever seen with substantially more homoerotic imagery.
“We saw where the market was going,” CEO John Rall said. “The old formula was 37 American flags, 12 skulls, nine eagles, an AR-15 and the word ‘FREEDOM’ in distressed type.”
He shook his head.
“That just doesn’t move product like it used to.”
Company research found that its shirts remained every bit as visually catastrophic as competing veteran brands but lacked sufficient quantities of shirtless, heavily muscled men.
“We listened to our customers,” Rall said. “They want freedom. They want defense. They want the thin blue line. But apparently they also want two oily dudes with mustaches standing extremely close together beside a motorcycle.”
ValorThreads designers have since adopted what the company calls “heritage masculinity.”
New designs feature mullets, aviator sunglasses, leather vests, handlebar mustaches, and enormous shirtless men whose relationships to one another are deliberately left unexplained.
“It’s not modern sexuality,” Rall said. “This is classic American male bonding. Think 1983. Think gym locker room. Think Navy recruiting poster nobody remembers actually existing.”
One new shirt depicts a six-pack-equipped George Washington straddling a bald eagle while gripping a rifle positioned directly between his legs. Another shows Abraham Lincoln, shirtless beneath an open leather vest, standing between two similarly dressed Union cavalrymen beneath the slogan:
WE SLEEP SOUNDLY IN OUR BEDS SURROUNDED BY ROUGH MEN.
Company officials insist the new direction remains consistent with ValorThreads’ brand identity.
“These are still horrible shirts,” Rall said. “We want to be very clear about that.”
The designs debuted at a conservative youth conference, where they generated immediate interest.
“Oh, yeah, very masculine,” said one attendee while slowly running his fingers across an illustration of two Marines wrestling shirtless beneath an American flag. “Nothing weird about this at all.”
He purchased three.
ValorThreads said early sales have exceeded expectations, particularly among customers who describe themselves online as “alpha males,” “traditional men” and “definitely straight.”
At press time, the company announced its next limited-edition release: two shirtless Green Berets repairing a motorcycle together beneath the slogan “COME AND TAKE IT.”
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