Those eco-friendly urban stylists at Printa have come up with a novel idea to feature Budapest on their T-shirts while their customer base is still mainly local, given the current lack of tourists. Part of the Printa Past collection, a new series features archive images of city life a century or so ago, as selected from the Fortepan communal photo resource. Each one has its own story – and one might have a present-day ending!
Selecting the "most sympathetic, funniest or strangest moments of the 20th century in Hungary"– with plenty of material to choose from – Zita Majoros and her team at Printa have devised a series of T-shirts featuring images from the Fortepan communal photo archive.
“Looking through them,” says Zita, surrounded by racks of sustainably produced original clothing and accessories at her funky store near the Synagogue, “we realised that people and relationships always have the same dynamic. Nothing changes apart from the circumstances”.
The particular T-shirt she was referring to, one of a series of three in a limited-edition series, hand-made in situ, caused a stir straight away. An image taken by a certain Leonóra Mészöly in 1900 – when female photographers were a rarity – shows three ladies in summer hats at jaunty angles, elegantly clutching parasols.
Vintage Budapest
“We can already guess which one was which kind of character just by how they’re standing in relation to one another,” explains Zita.
Providing the details
and crediting Fortepan on the back of the neck, just as she has done throughout, she
christened this particular design ‘Girl Gang’.
A few days later, she was
amazed when a customer recognised a long-lost relative on the T-shirt, someone in the
family who would have been around this age when Budapest was in its pomp. “She’s
looking into the details – there might well be a nice backstory to this
whole project.”
While the Girl Gang appears natural, their photo is still posed. The others, a pastoral scene and a shot of men outside a bike workshop, show real life as it was generations ago. “What I like about that photo is its honesty,” says Zita. “There’s no plastic involved, no mass production. Just craftsmanship.”
Similar to Printa’s philosophy, in fact. They use 100% organic cotton, with sustainability and zero-waste the watchwords. Each T-shirt retails at 8,500 forints.
With only a few artefacts
printed for each image, it shouldn’t be long before Zita is rummaging around the
Fortepan archive once more.
Printa
District VII. Rumbach Sebestyén utca 10
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