No. 053 Persian

I made this shirt for myself around 1998.
I thought my friends and I were really cool back in middle school. We had our own little club that we made up -though I can't remember the name-. We were all very close back then and hung out to play games almost every day. After watching TV shows with episodes like the Stonecutters -where they have an awesome secret society- I started a campaign to make our little group exclusive. We had initiation tests of video game tournaments, secret phrases and eventually uniforms or apparel. Though my internet browsing I found a series of images from Japan that were "high rez" layouts and pictures of every Pokémon at the time -1-150-. I had everyone in the group pick their favorite and then made shirts which matched. I have long lost this set of images but if I could find them again I suppose I could make more.
The shirt itself it just a plain white tee. I either had my mom buy it or we had some extras lying around the house. This was a long time before black tshirt transfers and the shirt had to be white so that there was something for the iron on to stand out on. If you were to iron these on a black shirt any part that was white would be black -since ink jet printers can't print with white ink and they didn't have a working, heat seal-able white paper yet. If you look close you can see where the edge of the iron on is -it's a bit shinier and begins to age faster than the rest of the fabric-. The shirt had to be white but it came with the risk of stains. So, yeah, this shirt is basically covered with stains by now.
The layout itself is super basic. This was a time before I was thinking outside the box with these iron-ons. My main goal here was to create some Pokémon merchandise that I wanted but didn't exist yet. Across the chest is a black bar. On the bar, in white text, it says "No.053 Persian シャムネコポケモン タイプ1.ノーマル". This is a designation for the Pokémon pictured here. The number 053 reflects its place in the "Pokédex" that the character holds, it's the 53rd Pokémon that is known of and it goes by the name of "Persian". The Japanese is a description, basically "Siamese Cat" and that it is of the "Normal type". The drawing is by an artist called "Strata Strike", who's logo is in the bottom right corner.
Wearing this shirt around school when Pokémon was at its prime was sweet. Going to tournaments, Japantown, or just wearing around while playing Game Boy was where this shirt shined. No one else had a tee like this and I would get one of three responses when I had it on: someone asking me where I got it because they wanted one, an acknowledgement that Pokémon/the shirt reference is cool, or a newcomer that wanted to know about the character and maybe even why I liked Pokémon.

I spent a good chunk of time playing Pokémon when I was growing up. I ended up getting both the Red and the Blue versions of the game along with my friends. We'd watch the anime, listen to the soundtracks and buy crazy character goods from importers. Pokémon has this awesome thing where there are so many different creatures with a variety of personalities and traits that you are compelled to pick a favorite. At the time mine was Persian. One, because in the show I figured if Meowth could talk then his evolved form should be able to as well, and two the leader of Team Rocket had one for a really long time which seemed awesome.