This Desigual T-shirt pays tribute to George Mallory and his doomed Everest expeditions. Printed over the image of the mountain are the words: “Great Mountains/ Epic brave men/ But/ Soy lo que soy Go lo que me de la Gana.” The last line is roughly translated from Spanish: “I am what I am, Go where I please.” Mallory famously said when asked by a New York Times reporter why he wanted to climb Everest (it had not yet been successfully climbed): “Because it’s there.”  (see National Geographic clip from doc, The Wildest Dream, about finding Mallory’s body 75 years later) Wade Davis‘ book, Into the Silence, details the hardships of expeditions and the relationship between the British and Tibetans. Davis, an anthropologist and ethnobotanist who is an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, chronicles Mallory’s three attempts to climb Everest (between 1921 and 1924) within the context of his experiences from First World War.  There is also an historic photo (left) of the expedition on the Desigual shirt, which is available at Angel Vancouver, located at No. 2 Powell in the Gastown district of Vancouver, Canada.

This shirt would make a great gift for  mountaineers or fans of Davis’ book….We are also taking orders for Christmas for custom hand-painted shirts. For more info, call Angel at (604) 681-0947 or email me at jackie@angelpaint.com

To see earlier posts, click on  “angelvancouver” at the top of this page, then scroll down.