This Print-On-Demand Company Ran Off With My Last Earnings... But The Fast Fashion Dream Was Fun While It Lasted.

A few years back, around 2018, I discovered Live Heroes, a fast fashion, print-on-demand company based out of Poland.

Ever since I was 14, one of my dreams was of becoming a fashion designer. Around the year 2014, sublimated clothing was coming out and it rekindled an urge for self-expression within me. Crazy psychedelic designs were coming out by new obscure e-commerce brands and

I wanted in.

A few years after my break with reality I was trying to regroup and dust off my roots as a (hobby) artist.

But I was lured by the peak and soon waning print-on-demand dream of offering my designs on products to the world. I was putting together a portfolio of self-taught digital art. Within a year I had my first couple hundred of colorful designs and discovered Live Heroes.

I only made snack money, even after 1,000 designs, but it was motivating to know that someone out there liked my art enough to purchase AND wear it.

This was before AI art exploded.

I admit, I dabbled with AI for a few pieces (kind of like what I’ve done with a few of my posts here) but it didn’t feel right unless the images were excessively edited or derived from my own artwork to begin with (you know, the ‘creation’ feeling?). AI art is here to stay though, and it has its place. I just wish that if people are going to use it, that they would try to be more collaborative with it.

There was no way I was going to turk out AI designs and upload them for coins. I was already getting into that habit with my own art, and it was draining.

But I’m digressing…

I guess at some point, these POD websites became flooded with AI art in addition to the large portfolios of digital artists. Because, let’s admit it, once you find your style(s) with digital art, you are like on autopilot and can churn out lots of designs. Not for every digital artist, but for a lot of us.

Anyway, I can’t speak for all companies, but Live Heroes did make quality apparel, and its shutting down was probably affected by the Ukraine-Russian war, so I can forgive them for hold my last earnings.

I enjoyed the samples I ordered from them with some of my earnings and have since donated the items. They were snuggly technicolor dreams during the last years of my young adulthood.

It would be easy for me to find another POD company to print my clothing with but after watching a few documentaries about fast fashion I think I will stick to one or two companies just to offer my designs on random merch for the person who fancies them.

Materialism was strangling the world, but I think we are peaking and growing out of it. People don’t want junk anymore and they want to save the planet. But they want to remain creative and capitalist and herein lies the problem!

I’m not a perfect humble nudist either.

That is admittedly too boring for me, but as a mature woman now, I have vowed to not buy any more clothing unless it falls apart or I bust out of it. Also, to consider used items and since I dress like a cheap dude most of the time that should be no problem 😄🫠.