Jordan Roth is offering limited-edition T-shirts with the saying “Commonplace Alien.”
Roth, the artist, actor and producer, explained that he launched a couture baseball T-shirt with that saying because of a nasty comment he received online.
In a telephone interview Friday, Roth said he gets a fair amount of nasty comments on Instagram and his favorite thing to do is to repost them with a witty zinger. One time, somebody called him a “Commonplace Alien,” and he joked on Instagram Stories that he would put that on a T-shirt and got hundreds of DMs for preorders. Now he’s serious and he’s designed his own couture baseball T-shirt with that saying on it.
Roth plans to post a video on Instagram Sunday morning offering the T-shirts for sale for a limited time only. They retail for $165 and are available at shop.jordanroth.com. “You can wear my hate comments, too,” says Roth in his video.
Roth explained that he’s really not a “T-shirt human,” and rarely wears them, but remembered that he always loved a baseball T-shirt and what it does to the body in showing off broad shoulders, a small waist and hitting the hip in just the right spot. “I designed this new silhouette, with dolman sleeve and a wider open neck because I love a clavicle, and we sourced this beautiful knit jersey almost like a knit sweater,” he said.
“If ever there was a couture baseball T, this is it,” said Roth.
For the graphics, they use his eye and lip from the post that the original person commented on. The person was commenting on Roth’s closet tour video for Architectural Digest. He took the still from that.
The T-shirts are manufactured in the U.S. They will print the T-shirts once they get the orders. This will be Edition 01, and Roth plans to come out with another one (with another nasty comment he received) in December.
“What I love about this is it emerges so organically out of what I’m doing and the community of conversation that we’re having online, which is so much about fashion, but also self-becoming and the risks of allowing ourselves to be seen. The fact that these are comments that we’ve all joked about together, and experienced together, and now they become a thing we can wear together. It transforms it from something nasty to something glamorous.”
Asked how he picked this one comment in particular, Roth said, “It just made me laugh so much. It called itself into being.”
Roth’s work encompasses performance art, fashion and acting. An avid fan of the couture, Roth often attends couture events, including Paris Fashion Week, where he showcases high-fashion looks and changes outfits quickly in the car as he gets ready for each designer show. He recently made his acting debut in the TV series, “The Shards.”