First-Edition T-Shirts Celebrate Book Cover Art

Childhood friends Todd Lawton and Jeff LeBlanc share a love for books, graphic design and T-shirts. And in February 2010, the duo decided to tell the world’s greatest written stories through fashion.

Nearly three years ago, the men launched Out of Print, a Brooklyn-based clothing and accessories line that reproduces iconic first-edition, and often out-of-print, book covers onto journals, notebooks, tote bags and T-shirts. The items caught the interest of Canio’s Books co-owner Maryann Calendrille when she stumbled across the company a year ago and decided to stock titles with a local connection in her Sag Harbor book shop.

On the store’s right wall, first editions of “The Great Gatsby,” “Of Mice and Men,” “Catch-22,” “Moby Dick,” “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “The Old Man and the Sea,” among others, now hang in T-shirt form along a clothesline strung across six columns of bookshelves.

In print, these books as first editions would cost a “pretty penny,” Ms. Calendrille said during an interview at her store last week. She reported that they can run anywhere from $200 to $20,000—if the copy is signed or in mint condition. Canio’s sells the first-edition T-shirts for $28.

“In the age of the Kindle and all the electronic media, there’s still interest in the book as object, as artifact, as something to hold and treasure,” Ms. Calendrille said. “These covers evoke this memory of the first time you read the book, where you were, how old you were, what it meant to you. It’s a talisman. It’s the trigger to all that book meant to you when you first opened it.”

She held out “The Great Gatsby” marine blue T-shirt in front of her, the disembodied eyes peering from the front of the shirt. The novel, penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is set during 1922 on Long Island and the cover art is by Francis Cugat, who illustrated the first-edition book cover.

“Having grown up on Long Island, I go back to this one as something very evocative of another time and place, and by extension a part of our history here,” Ms. Calendrille mused. “It’s a classic that everyone reads at one point, or ought to. And that particular image really seems to capture some of the glitter, but the sadness, of the characters’ lives. This scene is something that you are just drawn into.”

She ran her hand over the “Of Mice and Men” T-shirt, capturing the cover of the 1937 classic by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck, who kept a summer home at Bluff Point in Sag Harbor from the late 1950s until his death in 1968, she said.

“He lived around the corner from the bookshop before the bookshop was a bookshop,” she laughed. “He’s obviously an important figure, having won the Nobel Prize. I don’t know that any other Sag Harbor resident can claim that fame. To this day, people come in and ask directions to Steinbeck’s house. His fans are on a pilgrimage to locate anything connected to Steinbeck.”

Joseph Heller, the writer of “Catch-22,” lived in East Hampton. Herman Melville mentions Sag Harbor in “Moby Dick,” though it is unclear whether he actually visited the village, and Kurt Vonnegut, author of “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Breakfast of Champions,” among others, resided in Sagaponack. He visited the bookshop a number of times, according to Ms. Calendrille.

“He didn’t actually read here, but I have a photograph of him in front of the shop that Kathryn took,” she said, referring to her business partner, Kathryn Szoka.

There’s another famous author who’s included within the first-edition tee collection. He might not have lived here but his work is nebulously connected to the East End, nonetheless.

“And ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ we have a lot of old men out here, men who like to go fishing,” Ms. Calendrille said.

She smirked, holding up the brown shirt with the cover of Ernest Hemmingway’s last major work of fiction printed on the front. “That’s a little joke,” she said.

For each shirt sold, Out of Print donates one book through its partner, Books For Africa, to a community in need, according to Amanda Barstow, the clothing company’s sales manager.

“We were inspired by their work to improve access to books and promote literacy in underserved communities all over the continent and hoped to use our products to help promote their brand and mission,” she wrote in an email last week. “We add to our collection every few months. In general, the top-sellers tend to reflect both the popularity of the book and the imagery of the cover art. In recent months, children’s classics like ‘Mike Mulligan’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web’ have sold extremely well, which speaks to the power of nostalgia.”

As reading moves more and more toward a digital platform, the role of book covers in the new era remains to be seen, Out of Print’s website explains. Now is the time for readers to reflect on their own experiences with literary art before it’s transformed, it reads, or gone for good.

“Considering how much the literary landscape was changing, with e-books gaining popularity, [Mr. Lawton and Mr. LeBlanc] wanted to preserve the classic cover art while giving people an opportunity to express their love of literature,” Ms. Barstow wrote.

As she assessed her T-shirt inventory, Ms. Calendrille said she has a feeling she’ll need to restock soon. The first-edition tees were a hit during last year’s holiday season, she reported.

“We believe good books should not only be read, but worn,” she said. “Literally.”

For more information, call 725-4926 or visit caniosbooks.com.