10 Cool Vaporwave Tees You Can Buy

"The basic ethic of Vaporwave is the repurposing of old aesthetic and creative motifs to create a tapestry of meaning that often runs directly counter to the intention of the original source material."—Jeremy Cummings

Whether you know it or not, or you've consistently found yourself asking, "What is vaporwave?" vaporwave brings you joy.

The joy you feel in response to vaporwave sound and clothing aesthetics may come from a feeling of emptiness, but it is joy nonetheless.

You would gladly swap high quality YouTube videos for a glitchy VHS just for the nostalgic feeling it gives you, and seeing glitch art brings you back to a time when life felt much more straightforward.

Maybe you got onboard the vaporwave train when it gained speed in 2010, and you love Floral Shoppe and Blank Banshee because slowed down electronic music brings you joy and comfort.

When you love something as much as you love vaporwave, it's only natural to make it part of your identity by way of your wardrobe. Haven't you ever wondered what the rising popularity of vaporwave tees was all about?

Do you agree that emotion is what makes vaporwave music and aesthetics so powerful? You could say that about any music genre or song, but vaporwave is a culture that functions on a nostalgia that allows us to escape from the high tech and capitalistic world we live in.

I love this tee because it's minimal, but it still captures the essence of vaporwave with flowers and letters distorted by glitch art. The Vaporwave Aesthetic Feelings Flowers T-shirt looks like it's vintage, but it's brand new.

The tee is available in a variety of sizes for men, women, and youth. You can get it in black, navy, light blue, heathered grey, and purple.

Vaporwave is an escapism. We miss the days that came before the internet was so widespread, and you had to work harder to access information and stimulation. These days, it seems like it's harder than ever to escape, despite the fact that the connectedness of today leads to more isolation than ever before.

Vaporwave tees like this futurism tee can help you escape. Gazing at the island vibes and typical vaporwave aesthetics on this shirt symbolize the warmth and solitude that we all yearn for before a digital time.

In case you don't like to wear foreign characters without translating them first, the cyan and magenta Katakana characters spell "riratsukusu" which means "try lira." If you're not sure what that means, don't worry. Vaporwave is all about feeling a meaningful sensation in response to nothingness.

The tee comes in sizes for men and women, and it's 100 percent cotton, perfect for any casual occasion and event. I love putting on this tee after a stressful day at work and watching my favorite Saint Pepsi YouTube videos, or going out and dancing at future funk nights.

Vaporwave, if nothing else, is a very soulful type of music that tends to highlight the morose in life. It's meant to give you that moody, almost bluesy ambiance that comes with waking up into a world after a major party has ended.

This music embodies the sad feeling you get when you wonder if anyone really cares, or if they're just there because of all the neat, shiny things you can provide them with. This is what makes the inspired 90s fashion trends that are back in style so popular again.

This emotional and glitchy tee shirt gives you a nice taste of 90s technology, with a side of gentle sorrow. The sadboy in your life will love it just as much as the vaporwave fan you know.

If you love vaporwave tees with vibrant colors, sunsets, and retro geometric patterns that look digital, and if you enjoy listening to synthwave (or just love the 80s aesthetics) this tee is the one for you.

The graphics in this tee make me think of retro video games and electronic music from the 1980s, as well as films from this era such as The Terminator, Fletch, and Bladerunner.

The tee is available in a variety of sizes for men and women, and you can choose to have the graphics printed on a navy, asphalt, light blue, red, or silver classic-fit tee. The fabric is lightweight and durable, made of 100 percent cotton.

If you love to wear Japanese-inspired vaporwave tees, this tee could be the one for you (especially if you love rice balls).

In case you can't tell, this tee is decorated with a glitch art image of a rice ball. Of course, the Hiragana characters below the graphic should be a giveaway, but only to those who can read it. It says "Onigiri," which means "rice ball" in Japanese.

The glitch art graphics and Hiragana characters also come outlined by glitchy cyan and magenta borders, giving you that vaporwave aesthetic you love.

The tee comes in a variety of sizes for men, women, and kids in a selection of black, light blue, light pink, and light yellow, which are made of 100 percent cotton. You can also buy it in a dark heathered grey, which is 90 percent cotton and 10 percent polyester.

The electronic music of the vaporwave and future funk genres are marked by their use of lo-fi sound aesthetics, and often, the vaporwave tees we wear to express our appreciation of the genre reflect our nostalgia for the days before Spotify, when we used to listen to music on cassette tapes.

Wearing a tee with "lo-fi vibes" written on it could mean that you like to listen to music in a lower sound quality than people these days usually listen to. The letters in this tee are surrounded by glitchy cyan and magenta borders, add to the typical vaporwave vibe that can be found from these tees.

If that sounds like you, consider broadcasting your appreciation for cassette tapes and lo-fi vibes with this slim fit tee. It's available in a variety of sizes for men, women, and kids, and you can get it in black, light blue, light pink, or dark heather. If slim fit tees aren't your thing, try a size larger than you'd usually get.

The best type of breeze is a warm, neon breeze like the one on the Retro Otaku glitch art tee. I love how the cyan and magenta hues are reversed, so the sun looks cold, but the sky and the ocean seem warm.

The glitchy palm tree silhouettes help the shirt give off an island vibe without looking too much like those tacky Hawaiian t-shirts worn by stereotypical American tourists back in the 90s.

The glitchy Katakana characters at the bottom spell "neon buriizu," which is the phonetic Japanese equivalent to the English "Neon Breeze" at the top of the tee.

Whether you miss the milk boxes given to us in middle school, or you love kawaii and vaporwave tees regardless of what the graphics are, this tee is adorable. I'd even go as far as saying it's timeless because it's just so cute.

The Katakana characters at the bottom spell "miruku," which means "milk" in Japanese (it's a cognate to the English word).

The tee is available in sizes for men, women, and children in either black, navy, or dark heather. The solid colors are 100 percent cotton, and the heathered tee is 90 percent cotton and 10 percent polyester. All materials are super soft and snuggly.

Need some glitchy neon sunshine in your life?

The Kanji and Hiragana characters on this tee spell "hare ta," which means "it was sunny" in English.

"It was sunny," and "we are tired." Those two phrases capture the typical vaporwave mindset. In fact, "It was sunny. We are tired" would be enough to make this a great vaporwave tee on its own, but the circular, cyan and magenta glitch art graphics complete the vaporwave aesthetic.

This tee is perfect for anyone who is hip but grumpy, and wants to go back to their childhood. It is nostalgic in the most futuristic way possible.

The Tired Vaporwave Aesthetic Style tee is available black and navy for both men and women, and is made of 100 percent cotton. It's perfect for lounging around watching YouTube videos of the best vaporwave songs of all time, or VHS tapes if that's more your thing.

There's something about the juxtaposition of modern digital capitalism with Renaissance and Greco-Roman art that embodies vaporwave aesthetics.

Maybe it's the way art dictates beauty standards, or the idea that statues are so detailed and realistic, despite being empty, inanimate objects.

The statue on this tee may not be the Statue of David you see on typical vaporwave tees. Instead, it's a statue of a guardian angel with her eyes covered by a neon pink bar. This tee certainly sends off intense feelings of emptiness and wonder.

You can buy this tee for men and women. It comes in black, navy, and light blue. I love the light blue shirt because I love the combination of cyan and magenta, but all three colors look very cool and very vaporwave.

Plus, in this day and age, we could all use vaporwave tees with a guardian angel on it.