The rockers at the Bowery Ballroom and the Knitting Factory would tear these apart.
Barneys New York, the luxury department store chain that has its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, is selling rock band T-shirts for as much as $265 a tee, as Brooklyn Vegan first noted.
A Black Flag shirt at that steep price is "crafted of black brushed Japanese cotton-cashmere jersey," according to Barney's website, because punks really care about the quality of the fabric they're wearing while moshing.
This Joy Division shirt costs a slightly more reasonable $225 because it's got zero percent cashmere.
Both shirts fall under the R13 label, a brand created by designer Chris Leba. In an interview with Barneys, Leba credited his grunge aesthetic to the New York City rock music scene in the '80s and '90s.
"I came to New York in the mid-‘80s as a wide-eyed kid just absorbing everything around me," he said. "The punk scene was here, along with New Wave and grunge. Those were very formative years for me, and they still resonate with me as far as what I feel is 'cool.'"
Barneys New York's other expensive band tees, bearing the logos of rock legends like Guns N' Roses, The Rolling Stones, The Ramones and AC/DC, come from a clothing line called MadeWorn. Those are made of 100 percent cotton and retail for $175. Some come "distressed with holes," so you can score some street cred.
Or you could just buy T-shirts with the same album art for one-tenth of the price from SST Superstore, which is selling Black Flag tees for $15, or Hot Topic, where a Joy Division T-shirt goes for $18. Wearable band merch is also for sale in the city at Generation Records in Greenwich Village, Ted's Fine Clothing on the Lower East Side, and pretty much every vintage clothing store in the five boroughs.
Barneys New York did not immediately return a request for comment about the shirts.
