Autopian Labs Has Developed The World’s Most Advanced Stain-Tolerant Shirt And You Can Order One

You may not be aware of this, but this delightful website that you (hopefully) read non-stop day in and day out is actually just one part of the Greater Autopian Empire. The site is our public-facing media arm, but the truth is that at the heart of this organization is Autopian Labs, the secretive R&D facility that is constantly pursuing scientific developments to make human life better, richer, and with a pervasive scent of salami.

Autopian Labs has already announced a few groundbreaking discoveries, like the development of methods to store data in cured meats, advancements in obsolete cybernetics interfacing with obsolete optics, and even some legacy, long-term research projects involving petrochemical-based dyestuffs.

In fact, it’s that last area of research – where our own David Tracy attempted to dye clothing in motor oil in an attempt to mitigate stains – that brings us to our latest scientific advancement, one that is finally ready to share with the general public: we believe we have finally developed an effective, durable, and relatively safe stain-mitigating shirt. My friends, I would like to present to you the Autopian Labs Stain-O-Flage Mark 1 shirt:

We’re quite proud of our achievement, but in the interests of science, I have to make clear that this is still somewhat in the prototype stage. We knew there was a demand for a truly stain-forgiving shirt, and had several simultaneous research projects working on the problem.

A garment that actively repelled stains via an electromagnetic stain-repulsor field held initial promise, but the considerable power demands necessitated a 56-pound backpack with an always-running two-stroke generator engine, and the powerful EM anti-stain field caused burns and severe vomiting in our test subjects, who, I would like to stress, were all volunteers from the penal system and despite what you may hear in salacious news reports in the coming weeks, were fully informed of the nature of the study.

While we’re at it, I may as well address the animal testing question. Did we test these garments on animals? Well, yes. But I think the media is sensationalizing what actually happened. Did we get 75 puppies from the pound, put them in small versions of our Stain-O-Flage shirts, and then set them loose in an empty warehouse where the floor was littered with over 200 foot-long hoagies, all heavily condimented in mustard, mayo, and other stain-prone sauces? Yes, maybe we did.

Did some of the puppies eat too many hoagies and get a little sick? Maybe. Did some of them puke semi-masticated cold cuts all over our researchers’ laps? Perhaps. Did the vast majority of the puppies have the best fucking day of their lives? I think so. Did we learn much from this experiment? I’m not at liberty to say.

We also attempted to develop chemically repellent shirts that would simply not bond with oil, mustard, grease, mud, and so on, and while this was also promising, the skin burns we encountered seemed to be more severe than what most people are willing to accept from a T-shirt, which, according to our research, is “none” when it comes to skin burns.

This feels like a cultural failing, but that’s the market we have to deal with. If everyone is too candy-assed to not want a bit of chemical burns from their clothing, then I guess, fine, we’ll just have to accept that.

So what did we do? Well, we took a lesson from the most successful stain-forgiving materials on the planet: casino, movie theater, and bowling alley carpets, along with a bit of inspiration from WWI “dazzle ship” camouflage.

There are about a century’s worth of research data involving theater/casino/bowling alley carpeting and its remarkable ability to “absorb” stains from a wide variety of stainable materials. The complex, Dan Flashican patterns have been carefully honed and developed over years of stain-gathering, and have proven to be one of the most stain-forgiving materials known to humankind.

We also used WWI Dazzle Ship camo influences to provide the eye-confusing layer of visual obfuscation. By synthesizing these different methods of stain-obscuring, I think we’ve arrived at an ideal stain-obliterating pattern.

We attempted to use AI assistance in the development of Stain-O-Flage, but were forced to abandon that because the non-corporeal nature of AI simply could not truly comprehend the nature of stains in the real world. It simply lacked the actual frame of reference that we, as beings that have always existed in a world where stains were a danger, know.

We ended up developing the pattern via real-world automated, iterative systems that involved printing, stain testing, and accelerated aging, all on specially designed rigs. The test facility has been subsequently condemned and is being investigated as a potential superfund site, so further development will require a new facility. And, despite reports you may be reading on social media, we are offering counseling for anyone who may have been inside the facility in its later stages.

The resulting shirt looks “great” (our lawyers have advised that I cannot say the shirt looks great without putting that word in quotes) as you can see on our sexy model, David. Yes, at $39.99 it is more expensive than our usual T-shirts, but you have to understand, this is not just printing on some pre-made shirt: the Stain-O-Flage fabric has to be printed and sublimated at a separate (likely offshore, for safety) facility, and only later, after the proper time for curing and off-gassing has happened, can it be sewn into a shirt configuration, by specially-trained threadworkers wearing the appropriate protective gear.

Each Stain-O-Flage shirt is imprinted with the Autopian Labs seal and a partial list of stains we expect the shirt to be able to endure; any similar shirt lacking this franking is not an official Stain-O-Flage shirt, and should be treated with alarm.

This first batch of Stain-O-Flage shirts will be produced based on how many orders we get; it’s sort of a limited run, so I suggest you order quickly! Being part of this pilot run of what is very likely the greatest advancement in personal garment stain-tolerance since the development of rubber clothing, but that has been so comprehensively co-opted by the fetish community that clearly a new, more mainstream option is required.

And that’s where Stain-O-Flage comes in. The new frontier of stain tolerance for everyday use. I encourage all of you to buy a Stain-O-Flage shirt, and then work it, hard. Drip your mustard, lean onto a pool of ketchup, let your transmission fluid drip onto your chest, roll into a puddle of grease, crawl over grass, engage in clothed watersports (all kinds), back into a freshly painted wall, whatever – the point is these shirts mean freedom.

Freedom to be a slob. Freedom to do messy things. Freedom to get dirty, and yet maintain your dignity.

It’s Stain-O-Flage time, my friends. Get messy with us.

[Ed Note: These are made of a polyester type material, like a gym shirt. They fit rather loosely, and they seemed to me, on first wear, to be decently breathable. -DT]. 

Top graphic image: The Autopian