Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Since the 1970s it's been possible to communicate where you've been and what's been on your mind without uttering a single word.
A slogan T-shirt says it all. Forget blogs, social networking and texting for a minute, if it's a fashion statement you are trying to make, wear a T-shirt by Christopher Lee Sauvé and you could even pass for a fashion insider. How cool is that?
It takes someone who knows fashion, the gossip, intrigue and scandals going down within the secretive (bonkers) world of frocks, to tell it like it is. And this is just what the Canadian-born Sauvé does in his new 10-piece line of highly collectable T-shirts (sold exclusively through Nyla www.Nylaboutique.com).
Featuring beautifully hand-drawn fashion illustrations of fashion "celebrities", combined with fabulous one-liners similar to the sayings Carrie Bradshaw brought to our attention in Sex and the City, any fashionista would be proud to wear one. No wonder the fashion industry approves.
"The fashion industry loves paparazzi culture," said the 32-year-old fashion designer when I met him at the launch of his "Scandal" collection at Home House, the 200-year-old Georgian-built private members club in London where Madonna hangs out when she's in town.
As far back as 2008, the designer identified the phenomenon of the "fashion celebrity" and tried to convince industry peers that everyone was as obsessed with the stars of the industry, as they were with themselves.
"Fashion icons are the new rock stars… Carine Roitfeld is the new Michael Jackson!" he proclaims. And I believe him.
Madonna features in Sauvé's work along with Tom Ford (ranting about Americans being fat); the supermodel Karolina Kurkova, who is quoted on how a baby bump has taken over from the Chanel python handbag as the accessory du jour; and his now famous, "Save Anna'' image, featuring the face of the US Vogue editor.
The idea grew out of an email sent to fashion chums following rumours of the dismissal of Wintour in 2009.
"Diane suggested I voice my support on a T-shirt," he says referring to Diane von Furstenberg (fashion people only ever go on first-name terms, remember?), who he has collaborated with, along with Alexander Wang and Ralph Lauren.
"I started out doing T-shirts for bands. I used to give them away to kids to wear in clubs. I liked the idea of art you could wear, not just stick on a wall."
He tells me how he would, as a child, colour in the black and white tabloid newspapers sent from his grandmother in Britain. It was this image, biased towards the written word that kept on returning to him whenever he attempted to come up with something ultra-modern.
He now partners with Amy Odell, a fashion columnist at New York magazine. ("She comes up with a scandal. I illustrate it." )
One of the reasons Sauvé's designs work so well can be put down to not just in-the-know sayings, but more the tone of how we speak today.
While the illustrations hark back to yesteryear, the quotes are written in that sharp, speedy, broken new language used in social networking and texting - more Facebook than The New York Times. The fact that the material is controversial helps, too.
When slogan T-shirts were championed by Katharine Hamnett in the mid 1980s, the fashion designer had serious issues, not just frocks, on her mind.
In 1983, when Hamnett wore her T-shirt spelling out, "58% DON'T WANT PERSHING" - a reference to public opposition to Pershing missiles being based in the UK - to meet the former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher's visible discomfort helped the T-shirts become an overnight must-have.
And when Wham!, George Michael's pop group, wore Hamnett's "Choose Life" supersized T-shirts (for their 1985 global tour) it furthered the public's desire for wordy T-shirts.
Stella McCartney used them to play on her Beatle lineage with her "ROCKOCRACY" T-shirts.
The celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe, has copyrighted her catchline, "I die," (fashionspeak for "I love it") and put it on a T-shirt.
But it was the former fashion-writer-turned-designer Henry Holland who put himself, not least his slogan T-shirts, on the radar in 2006. While working as a fashion editor on a teenage magazine, Holland started designing rhyming slogan T-shirts for his friends ("I'll Tell You Who's Boss Kate Moss") referencing fashion celebrities in his groovy East London inner circle.
What started as fashion crowd jokes caught on. When the designer Gareth Pugh wore a Holland T-shirt saying, "Get Yer Freak On Giles Deacon," in reference to the designer, to take his bow post-show, everyone wanted one.
"I was a writer. I wrote on clothes, and then I made clothes," says Holland, who has since grown his brand, House of Holland, from T-shirts to a full ladieswear collection stocked at Barneys in New York and Harrods in London.
Blame Holland's ironic slogans for the subsequent slogan mania that erupted worldwide.
Reactionary T-shirts emblazoned with " Team Angelina" and "Team Jennifer" followed the announcement of Brad Pitt's split from his former wife in 2006. Ditto, Arnold Schwarzenegger's "I survived Maria 1977-2010" T-shirt, in reference to his defunct marriage to Maria Shriver.
Slogan T-shirts arrived in the UAE courtesy of Mohammed Sultan Al Habtoor, a fixture on Dubai's fashion and art scene, who created his line following remarks made by the Emirati Dr Lamees Hamdan about Dubai on The Oprah Winfrey Show (proceeds of which went to a local charity).
This led to his company, House of GlaMO, popping up at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival in 2010.
"There's something cool about T-shirts right now," says Ambi Badyal, who runs the Nyla online boutique with her sister, Navi.
"They are unisex. You can put them on on a weekend morning or wear them to work. Or wear them out in the evening. They are a talking point. They make you feel special and they look really cool. It's something to always have in your wardrobe; a piece of affordable, wearable fashion art."
T-shirts that can talk you into buying them. What are you waiting for?