Dead or Alive - Brand New Lover / Rip It Up Tour T-shirt

At this point in time, this is the greatest piece of music merch that I have in my collection!

Some backstory:

For about 12 years now, it's been a dream of mine to own a vintage Dead or Alive t-shirt. Dead or Alive has been my favourite band since I was 11. And I always wanted to collect a bunch of Dead or Alive / Pete Burns related stuff. I knew getting an official DOA t-shirt from the 80s was going to require a lot of money. So for years, I've been saving up a lot of money for this one moment in my life.

Just recently, I have acquired a DOA shirt over on eBay from a trusted / good rated seller. According from what they told me, the seller had purchased this shirt from an antique shop and they could tell that it was from the 1980s by the Springford tags. That's all that they know about this specific shirt since they weren't the original owner of it.

I decided to post pictures of this shirt to the official Dead or Alive / Pete Burns Facebook group in order to confirm with experts that this indeed was an official DOA shirt. When others got back to me, not only did they confirm that this shirt was official, but they also stated that these shirts were sold during the 1987 North American leg of Dead or Alive's Rip It Up Tour.

If there was one tour that I wish I could time travel to and be a part of, it would be the Rip It Up Tour since that tour was made to promote DOA's 3rd album 'Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know' and that has been my favourite non-metal album ever since I listened to it as a kid.

The fact that I own a piece of official merch from my favourite band from my favourite era of them means the world to me. I have finally captured my personal holy grail. <3

As for how much I paid for this... well... I feel like I'm gonna look crazy if I say the exact amount since it was pretty pricey. All I'll say for now is that I paid in the three digits for this one. I don't mind that it was very expensive though since I've been saving up money for a shirt like this for over a decade now. And since I recently got a full-time job, I had more then enough money ready and saved up for this moment. This shirt makes me so happy. So I think it's worth every penny.

Below are a bunch of pictures going through almost every angle of this shirt. A bunch of bootlegs are recently making the rounds. So I think it's nice that I can log in this shirt to inform others what to look out for if they ever want to get a similar vintage shirt. One thing to note about Spring Ford shirts is that their sizes are not what they say they are. Before I got this shirt, I was informed that this shirt fits like a modern small even though it is labelled as a large. (And I didn't mind that since I can fit in a small size t-shirt with no problems).

That's all that I wanted to say about this special T-shirt. For anyone reading this, if you are still looking to capture your holy grail, don't give up! Your time will come one day.