All for the Sake of a Shirt

Some of you may have heard this story before.

Back in 2014, I saw this picture of Jeremy Lin and Lecrae.

I thought, that's a cool shirt, maybe I'd like to buy that...

But the problem is, how do you go about finding a shirt with nothing more than a picture to go off of?

I searched "guy with balloons shirt", "Up Shirt", etc. but to no avail.

I gave up looking and put it on a mental back burner.  What would happen is that once a month/whenever I remembered, I would try looking for the shirt online.  I started to even scour the most obscure of internet forums, trying to find people who commented on this picture, as well as reverse image searching to find other sites that hosted the picture.  It became more about the process than the actual shirt.

~6 months later, I had a breakthrough after multiple failed attempts.  On a random basketball forum, I found someone who had the same question as I did, and below another commenter gave two words that would lead me to the right path: Imaginary Foundation.

Imaginary Foundation, I would find, is a small, pretty hipster shirt company with a lot of trippy designs.  I went on their website and looked at their entire catalog, but could not find the shirt.  I emailed customer service, who replied saying that they do not produce that shirt anymore. This was a setback, but they did give me the official name of the shirt - "Airborne".

I then searched the internet again for "Imaginary Foundation Airborne" shirts.  Most websites said that the shirt was out of stock, but I managed to find one website that had it.  

It was a British Amazon-like site that I had never heard of before. Everything was marked in British pounds, and I had to end up using Paypal to pay for it.  The shirt was the most expensive I have ever bought -- 70 pounds or $90 -- but I kinda expected this since it was not being produced anymore.  I also wasn't going to back down after coming this far.

No problems happened with shipping and the condition was brand new.  Nowadays, I only end up wearing it once or twice a year, and have to take great care in washing/drying.  

I just tried looking for it again, and it seems every website says it's out of stock.  I guess I somehow own a rare collector's item.  I think I now understand what art collectors/archaeologists feel when they finally find what they're looking for.  It's less about the end goal, but rather the journey of getting there.  The thrill of the hunt!