The Inspiration of the Lion

I want to take the time to write a post about one of our more recent releases. To most people, our "No Tamed Lion" tank top has little to no meaning. They might think "Wow. That looks cool", but it goes no further. I wanted to share with you the inspiration behind this article and what it really means to me. The main reason that we went with this is because of my uncle Robert.

My mother's brother wanted to enlist in the military when he was 18, but you had to be 19 years old to serve. In order to fulfill my brother's wish, my grandfather lied and said he was 19. So in 1965 my uncle left to serve in Vietnam. The main reason he served was because he would receive a full ride through college. My uncle served his first term and stayed for a second. Robert was pronounced dead on the morning December 25, 1966. He passed away on Christmas Eve and the night before his twentieth birthday.

Robert is on the far left.

Before he passed he would send photos back to my mom who was 10 at the time. My favorite was a photo of him standing bare chested in front of a machine. On the back of the photo he wrote "See my tiger on my tank."

I had seen this photo growing up, but I just saw it again recently and thought "Hey, I should do a tiger on a tank top." So I got with my friend, Wesley, who does graphic design and said "What do you think of this concept? Could you design me something?" He liked the idea and asked me what I wanted it to look like. So I sent him a photo of a lion silhouette for reference. Well he interpreted it as me wanting a lion and he came up with this graphic. The design was so cool I just decided to keep the lion. In a way I think it is fitting, the Lion symbolizes "Courage" and "Honor". So even though it isn't a tiger, it's still in memory of my heroic uncle Robert Michael Klevenowski.

(C) 2012, Predicate Attire