Rep Your City. Rep Your Culture. Do It With Style.
Toronto Raptors Special Edition Bubble Tea , Vladdy Jr “Born Ready”, Bruce Lee “Gung Fu Scratch” T-Shirts
Showing pride from where you are from and your culture is a good thing, in my mind at least.
Some people might worry about wearing merch like that, for different reasons.
Some worry it’s showing too much pride. Some worry it’s an immature look.
I think if done right, it’s a good thing. Here’s a few options that works, and this is from my Chinese Canadian perspective.
Repping your home sports team is the easiest move
This is the easiest move. For example, I wear a lot of Toronto Raptors gear per this post.
Now normally I am not a big baseball guy, but the Toronto Blue Jays brought the country together when they made it to the World Series last season, and had one of the best World Series ever playing L.A. Dodgers.
And there was a cultural moment when Vladdy Jr. said he was “born ready” for the big moment … and a great T-Shirt came out of it. And I have to admit, I was caught in the moment and also bought that T-Shirt .. but it has since made interesting talking point whenever I wore it, whether it was with other Baseball fans, to someone from Dominican background as Vladdy is a Dominican Canadian.
Vladdy Jr “Born Ready” T Shirt
Next - repping your city/country
This one might be a tougher move.
Good news for Canadians, we’re usually well liked around the world for our kindness 😊. But wearing merch with Canadian flags or with red Maple Leaf I think is too obvious of a move.
I like clothes that reps with smart witty moves or has style to it. Below are 2 hats I got from Peace-Collective, a wool hat that’s always a smart style move in cold weather, while the corduroy dad cap which is one of my favourite, and simply says “TO” which is Torontonian’s favourite slang for calling the city’s name.
I think repping your city/country does not mean you have to lose style points for it.
Then repping your culture
My cultural background in Chinese, from Hong Kong. And there are different ways to rep that too.
One really smart way that Toronto Raptors have incorporated the East Asian culture, is having special editions where they have the Raptor holding a bubble tea T-shirt, along with the Raptors name in Chinese. Again the number of times I word this shirt that drove conversations is countless, because people that sees it can tell that’s it has unique swerve to it - and I think it gives a chance to discuss my love of basketball but also swerve into cultural discussion like how much I like bubble tea 😂
The other shirt that I love is Bruce Lee “Gung Fu Scratch” t-shirt. This t-shirt was made famous a long time back when it also became Robert Downy Jr’s favourite shirt and he even wore it during Avengers movie. Bruce Lee is by far one of the biggest legend ever not just for Chinese culture, but for martial arts and action movies. Being able to wear this to rep my Chinese culture is pretty F’ing awesome.
What’s your favourite style move in repping where you’re from? Let’s hear it in comment section below
