Apologies for the BlackBerry-quality struggle shot of this shirt. Only Andrew Bunney and friends could turn a defunct moquette from the District Line and a few other carriages and buses into a plaid-style pattern and a kind of public transport camouflage. With the Nike project using this design there seemed to be a deliberate nod to the parallels between trainspotters and shoe dudes but this thick overshirt design with its workwear weight (part of a handful of pieces using this pattern as an all-over application) from the second Roundel collection just seems to have a bit of fun with the inadvertent bashiness of it, looking like something Super Cat would wear in 1991 (always a good thing) or some kind of alternative London Underground staff uniform. Back in 1978 when Misha Black was creating this design for the Design Research Unit, he would have been oblivious as to where it would end up. Beyond its intended line, it was on Metrobus seats, the Circle Line and 1983 Jubilee Line stock until it exited the District Line in the mid to late 1990s and had apparently vanished from London at the start of the 2000s.Those were the days when everyday design had a certain soul.
GWARIZM 