Your trauma. Our cotton. Everybody wins.
Somewhere in your phone notes is a line too good to waste. Something your mother said at Christmas. Something your manager put in writing. Something you thought at 3am and never told anyone.
Send it to us. Every month we pick one, print it, and put it in the shop - and the person who sent it gets the shirt free, with their name on it.
How it works
Your own words, something that happened to you, or a design if you've made one.
One every month. We look for the lines that make us sit up - specific, sharp, and true.
Free, in your size, posted to you before it goes live to anyone else.
With a credit: "Suggested by [your name]." Your line, out in the world, on other people's backs.
What wins
Specific beats general
Vague thoughts don't sell shirts. Details do.
Tap for example✕ "My family is annoying"
✓ "My mother asked when I'm having children - at my grandmother's funeral"
Short beats long
Five words or fewer is the sweet spot.
Tap for exampleIf it needs a paragraph to land, it's a story, not a slogan. Cut it until only the sharp bit is left.
True beats clever
We're not looking for jokes.
Tap for exampleWe're looking for recognition. The lines that sell are the ones that made someone, somewhere, go quiet.
Keep it yours
Your own words only.
Tap for exampleNo song lyrics, film quotes, or things you saw on the internet. We check.
The fine print, briefly
By entering, you're confirming the line is genuinely yours and giving us permission to print, sell, and post it if it wins. You'll be credited unless you'd rather stay anonymous - plenty do, and we understand why.
If your line is selected, ownership of the finished design transfers to Cringe Apparel. That means we own the artwork, the typography, and the product it becomes, and we can sell it, re-run it, adapt it, or retire it as we like - worldwide and without a time limit. The free shirt is the prize; there's no royalty, commission, or share of sales, and no ongoing payment of any kind.
You keep the right to say the words yourself - we're not claiming your sentence, only the design we make from it. But you can't sell it, license it, or give it to another brand to print once it's ours.
We won't print anything hateful or aimed at a real, identifiable person. Everything else is fair game.
One winner a month. We'll message you if it's you.
Before Cringe.
A wardrobe of things that said nothing. Drag to see what happened next.
Before
After