So yeah, here’s a picture of some new One Piece jeans. In case you didn’t notice, they say “Im gonna be the Pirate King!!” across the buttocks. And yes, that’s an exact quote, missing apostrophe and all. Bad grammar and bad fashion all rolled into one.

Slick, eh? No don’t let me catch any of you wearing these about town – that might be grounds for kicking you in the Pirate King.

Oh, and for a more detailed breakdown of these jeans and all their One Piece splendor, check out comicsalliance.com, which is where I stole the above picture from anyways.

There’s a right way to do pirate fashion, and there’s a wrong way. Wanna guess which one Vivienne Westwood chose? The wrong way – definitely the wrong way. But now that I think on it, most ways I’ve seen on the runways have been the wrong way. Jean Paul Gaultier back in 2007 had a mixed bag, and Gwen Stefani with her Rich Girl video struck several high points, but most of the stuff out there has been sorely misguided – and that goes double for mens’ wear. Why, oh why does no one design awesome modern clothing for the heterosexual, non-demented guy pirate? The answer, of course, is that straight, sane guy pirates pay no attention to fashion whatsoever, and buy most of their modern clothing at yard sales and side-show gift shops.

A few more highlights:

It’s Monkey Island custom shoes!

!!!

One shoe has Guybrush in a swordfight, the other portrays the night watchman of Melee Island. They don’t show what’s on the flip side of either, so I’m going to assume LeChuck in a tickle fight with Herman Toothrot on the left, and Elaine Marley in a seductive pose on the right.

So for your naysayers who thought Monkey Island was dead, EAT IT!

“The Goonies” Edition

Now this is just disturbingly cool – limited edition Goonies Shoes. Actually, I’d buy them just for the bag (not the burlap outside, but check out the map lining! Coolness and then some!

Dressing like a pirate is the easy part. Well, not really. But intuitively speaking, if you’re attending a costumed event, then you already know – more or less – several ways to go about expressing your inner pirate. The tricky bit is how to go about indulging your swashbuckling id when cavorting amongst polite society – neighborhood barbeques, work parties, and timeshare presentations. Of course, some folks will just say, “bullocks” and dress like a pirate anyways. But most of us would seek a more sophisticated merger of between our inner pirate and outer reality.

For years, t-shirts have been the mainstay for wearing your love of piracy on your sleeve (or more generally, your chest), while also dressing in acceptably modern fashion. But Seawolf Clothing has now taken a different tack with their run of “Caribbean Shirts.” And just what is a Caribbean Shirt? Think Hawiian shirt, but for (you guessed it) Pirates!

Seawolf Caribbean Shirts are available in two colors, each with its own pirate-based pattern (each focusing heavily on skull&bones, but with different accent art.) For the purpose of this review I selected the blue shirt, which features smaller monotone jolly rogers against a backdrop of carribean charts. It makes for a more subtle look that does the black shirt, which features larger, more colorful jolly rogers and various pirate phrases all around (booty! captain! pirate!) Which shirt to choose would depend on the personality of the wearer, combined with just how overtly piratey they wish to be.

Upon handling, my shirt was surpringly soft, yet also thick and durable feeling. The shirts appearance itself was as expected with its pirate pattern, but closer inspection revealed two surprising details. First, the buttons – rather than plastic – are actually carved from coconut, and read “seawolf.” And second, the pattern of the shirt blends perfectly with the pattern of the chest pocket, with each image and line of the shirt transfering seamlessly. It’s small details like these that can make or break a quality garment, and the Seawolf Caribbean shirts easily meet or surpass any expectations.

The one caution I would offer would be regarding sizing. With most t-shirts I comfortably wear a large. However, I was literally swimming in a large Caribbean Shirt, and so opted instead for a medium. The medium is a much better fit, although a small may have been even better. In short, they run big. And being as patterned shirts of this sort are anything but slimming I’d suggest that if you’re on the fence between sizes, err small.

I love the ability to dress in piratey splendor while also dressing “normal,” and Seawolf Caribbean shirts fit well into that mindset. If you’re likely to attend any luaus or other Hawiian-shirt-appropriate events in the near future, one of these shirts would be a fine piratey alternative to the more typical flowery sissy prints.

Yar.