"Customize" is one of those words that gets used until it stops meaning anything. Every brand has a customizable something now — a monogram, a colourway, an option to make a mass-produced thing feel like yours. I use the word too, for our Tee by You collection, our custom printed tees. So let me be precise about what it means when I use it, because precision is the only thing that keeps a word like that honest.
It doesn't mean you send us a photo and we print it. That's not a small distinction — it's the whole one. A photo you send is yours already. Printing it on a shirt doesn't customize anything; it just transfers something that existed before the shirt was made. That's not what the Tee by You collection is for.
What it means instead: you choose the tee colour — White, Black, or Navy.
Then you choose the graphic, and the graphic comes from our original artwork, the same images you've seen across the site and on the shop page. A selection from artwork that already exists, made by us, for you.
Then you choose the graphic, and the graphic comes from our original artwork, the same images you've seen across the site and on the shop page. A selection from artwork that already exists, made by us, for you.
Once you've chosen both, the shirt is printed to order here in Toronto on the same 100% cotton that every one of our t-shirts is built on. Nothing comes off a warehouse shelf pre-made in your size and your combination, waiting for someone to want it. Yours doesn't exist yet. It starts after you choose!
The truth is: you're picking from a shortlist, not opening a blank page. Colour, then graphic — two decisions, both bounded, both real. And because they're bounded, the decision actually is one. You're not customizing an abstraction. You're choosing a specific combination that didn't exist until you chose it.
That's also why every custom tee is final sale. Once it's built to your combination, it's built for you — not for the next person who might want a medium in navy with a different graphic. There's no shelf to return it to, because there was never a shelf to begin with. The finality isn't a policy. It's just what happens when something is made to order rather than made in advance.
If you've been circling the Karlie or Viv, this is what you'd actually be choosing. Not a blank page. A shortlist you get to close — the colour, the graphic, both already true before you arrived — made specifically for you only after you decide. That's smaller than "customize" usually promises. It's also the only version of it I can stand behind.
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