Star Wars T-Shirt Design Sample Prints - LFL Licensing Archives Examples

T-Shirt designs printed on fabric, NOT actual t-shirts.

As part of their contracts, Star Wars licensees were generally required to send samples of all products to Lucasfilm, both for final approval and to create a merchandise archive. Certain key personnel were also given product samples, and excess items were sometimes available for purchase by Lucasfilm employees.

Starting around 2004, Lucasfilm purged a large portion of these materials in preparation to move from their San Rafael location. A good number of these were donated to thrift stores, and others were given away at Star Wars Celebration III or auctioned off at Celebration IV. Other items were simply dumped as trash and retrieved by those who recognized their collector interest.

These t-shirt sample originate from that LFL archive purge, and represent some of the most difficult to find vintage t-shirt designs from a line released by Union Underwear (maker of Underoos) in 1982. Released at a time between movie releases, these shirts appear to have been produced in relatively low numbers. As a collector of Star Wars t-shirts, I had not even realized most of these designs existed before the auctions at Celebration IV, although since then I have confirmed production versions of many of them.

If you're interested in Star Wars apparel items, this may be the only way you can get an example of these designs, albeit not on an actual t-shirt. Except for the 2 Return of the Jedi styles that are iron-ons, these are silkscreen designs on a thin felt-like material that would have also been used as sales materials to retailers.

I have had a few extras in the past and sold them for more, but since I bought multiples of most in this group I am initially offering them for a lower price. This is my standard pattern when I buy multiples -- offering the best price when initially posted for sale and then increasing the price as I sell down the supply.