Someone has to be brave enough to say it.
Konami has partnered up with Online Ceramics—the consciously, ostentatiously inelegant fashion house—to produce a line of Silent Hill 2-themed merch. Featuring tees, hoodies, trousers, and plenty more besides, the clothes all feature designs that look like they were assembled by someone with access to Google Images, a copy of Microsoft Paint, and a staggering deficit of aesthetic sensibility.
They’re kind of amazing.
That’s just my opinion, of course, and the whole world seems to almost unanimously disagree with me, but this kind of ‘I made this in one afternoon when someone left me alone in the school computer room’ style is very much an Online Ceramics trademark, and I think it perfectly matches Silent Hill 2’s haunted ’90s vibes. I lack the verve to wear something as aggressively dernier cri as this hoodie emblazoned with a foggy picture of Maria and the contextless quote “I don’t look like a ghost, do I?” but if I met someone wearing it I would probably do literally anything they told me to.
Welcome to art. (Image credit: Online Ceramics / Konami)
But alas, alack, the Silent Hill 2 fandom does not share my enthusiasm. The responses to Konami’s announcement tweet all convey some variant of ‘bruh,’ and most of them regard the collaboration as yet another indictment of Konami’s handling of Silent Hill as a series. “It’s actually baffling how many bad decisions you guys make as a company,” replied roy_oddities on Twitter, “Silent Hill deserves to be in better hands”.
Another user, allenr85, offered to “toss some garbage on a tshirt and sell it for $300 bucks” in Online Ceramics’ place, and even presented a sample of what they can make.
Damn Konami just hire me if you want someone to toss some garbage on a tshirt and sell it for $300 bucks.Here I’ll give you a sample of what I can make pic.twitter.com/AmwQyjX6DZApril 13, 2023
Over in the Silent Hill subreddit, the top-voted response to the collab’s announcement comes from SirPhobos1, who wrote “These are garbage. Especially with the online ceramics name on them. It’s like a shirt someone made with their inkjet printer in 2006”.
“To like these must mean having a serious case of denial,” they concluded. Which, hey, could be a fair assessment.
To be fair, it does it cost a lot more money ($60 for a t-shirt!) than I’d ever spend on clothes personally, but that’s endemic to fashion in general rather than a particular critique of Konami or Online Ceramics. If, like me, you’re brave enough to recognise that this stuff is good, actually, you can find the whole collection on the Online Ceramics website. And if you just want to gawp at some more weird clothes, here are a few of my favourites:
(Image credit: Online Ceramics / Konami)
(Image credit: Online Ceramics / Konami)
(Image credit: Online Ceramics / Konami)
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