Liberty Graphics found out from an employee scrolling TikTok: Taylor Swift wore one of their T-shirts, and it had gone viral.
In the clip from “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” a film about making her latest album, the pop star wears a 1990s shirt promoting the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
It shows two sea otters floating side by side in a kelp forest, surrounded by facts and illustrations of their main food sources: sea urchins, clams, crabs, mussels and octopus. Swift is fond of the animals and has said the interest is shared by her fiance Travis Kelce, a star tight-end for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs football team.
“We knew immediately when we saw it, ‘Hey, that’s our design,’” said Matt Enos, the company’s multimedia manager.
As the video took off, fans and aquarium staff hunted for clues about the shirt’s history while lower-quality bootleg versions of it popped up online (Liberty Graphics stresses that its water-based inks are environmentally friendly and long-lasting).
Eventually, the aquarium’s art director found original invoices for the shirts while digging through file boxes and reached out to the company about reissuing it.
A limited run drops on Thursday in response to “Swifties and sea otter fans’ demands,” the groups said in a joint press release. It may be printed again if the run is successful.
The midcoast Maine business, based in Liberty’s village, was soon getting “nonstop” phone calls, emails and hundreds of comments from fans wanting the shirt. Swift’s vigorous fanbase has notable economic power — “Swifties” reportedly spent $5 billion nationwide when she toured last year — and this is the first known instance of them focusing this much of their attention on Maine.
The company’s designs have gotten traction online in the past, such as a sunflower design issued at the start of the war in Ukraine three years ago, but never like this, according to Enos.
“This is definitely bigger than what we’re used to, with the biggest celebrity probably on the planet at the moment,” he said.
The reprint is a fundraiser for the California aquarium’s sea otter rehabilitation program. Donations of $65.13 or more – the amount of photographs taken for one of her albums followed by her favorite number – can receive the shirt as a thank-you gift.
The specific design originated with a now defunct Belfast-based company called Harborside Graphics. When it closed, Liberty Graphics acquired its archive. The Liberty company also worked with the aquarium in the 1990s and had been looking to rekindle that relationship, according to Enos.
Liberty Graphics was started in the 1970s by Tom Opper, a back-to-the-lander who enlisted friends to make designs for local events, and was purchased by employees in 2021. The company is equipped to produce about 1,000 shirts a day, Enos said, and is not concerned about meeting fan demand.
Its extensive archive spans thousands of designs focused on natural themes, both as t-shirts and “pellon squares,” which are used for tests before print runs.
Enos’ job is part historian – one of his early tasks was photographing everything he could find in the building – and he curates this archive while trying to fill in early designs that may have gone missing and choose older ones to reissue.
Retro designs have been a big draw to customers for several years even before Taylor Swift, he said, such as a 1975 strawberry illustration that’s been a top seller.
The new attention has also introduced more people to the company and its other offerings, which support educating people about wildlife, the natural world and conservation efforts — values he said the company shares with the aquarium.
“It’s been fun to interact with them,” Enos said of the fanbase.