He may lose the hockey mom vote, but it’s a safe bet that Barry is still the favorite among the graphic design crowd. So it’s no surprise the man has better t-shirts.

This one is our pick so far, splitting the difference between Andy Warhol and Shepard Fairey. It’s got more irony than most campaign shirts—after all, who wants to vote for a soup can?—and a little wit goes a long way.

So far they’re just online, although you can probably find one in person if you take a stroll through central Williamsburg over the next few weeks. As for a soup can-fueled bump in the polls…we’ll keep you posted.

The art tee business is getting pretty crowded, and new ideas are always in short supply. An outfit called The Affair has come up with one: limited editions.

This tee comes out of a closed batch of two hundred…impressive until you realize that the Threadless print runs aren’t that much larger. They just have the foresight to call the number up front, and stick to their guns when it sells out early. It’s the same gimmick that lets Shepard Fairey sell an Obama poster 350 times and the gallery owners of the world grab a slightly bigger piece of the pie.

If they’re going to be art tees, it’s time they started acting like it.

Belle du Jour: Kate Winslet steps into Catherine Deneuve’s shoes for the win. [FashionIndie]

Just for Kicks: What the world needs now, more than anything else, is crocodile skin sneakers. [Luxist]

The Writing on the Wall: A countdown of the top 25 parodies of Shephard Fairey’s Obama “Hope” poster. Sadly, Nate Dogg does not make the list. [Village Voice]

Dov Love: The cops are after Dov Charney, for all the obvious reasons. [PSFK]

He may not realize it, but Shepard Fairey is one of the most promising artists of his generation. We can’t think of any American street artists who have managed as thorough an urban transformation as he has in New York, and his Obama poster is easily one of the most iconic images produced by any artist in over a decade. He deserves a cash-in or two; we just wish he could have made it a little more tasteful.

Fairey launched the OBEY clothing store today, and it’s genuinely abysmal. It’s a thrown together assortment of sub-Urban Outfitters schlock that treats Fairey’s meticulously collected phrases as if they were a brand on the level of Bugs Bunny, ready to be silkscreened onto sweatshirts en masse without any attention to actual style or design.

In every item, it’s obvious that Fairey has absolutely no interest in becoming a viable clothing designer. Which is fine by us. We just wish he could have stuck to gallery sales.

Market capitalism has had a rough few months, and everyone seems to be piling on. It lost the bankers to corporate bailouts and now it may lose its most vocal and culturally important spokesmen: the rappers.

The new single from the production team N.A.S.A. manages to lure Chuck D out of obscurity for an impressive verse, and that’s a MOTH you’re hearing on the chorus, but the song—titled “Money”—doesn’t seem to think too highly of the stuff. In fact, it’s downright skeptical. Maybe it’s Shepard Fairey’s video, but the paper chase comes out looking pretty unseemly. And if we can’t believe in material wealth, what’s left to rap about?

Whatever happened to putting five carats in your baby girl’s ear?

See the video»