Radiant Baby Icon, 1990 Street Art T-Shirt

A crawling baby, ringed with short radiating lines, in thick black outline. It is possibly the most optimistic mark anybody made in downtown New York in the 1980s.

It came off the subway walls, where the drawing had to read from across a platform and be finished before anyone official arrived, and it was used as a signature — the figure that stood in for the artist. The Icons Series put it on paper in 1990. The radiating lines are the whole idea: a baby drawn as a source of light rather than a subject being lit. If you know, you know. If you don’t, it is still the best thing on the platform.

Daddy pairs it with the Barking Dog and considers the two of them a set, because they are.

The shirt itself is the good kind of basic: combed ring-spun cotton, preshrunk, side-seamed so it hangs straight, taped shoulders so the collar doesn’t twist after the fortieth wash. It fits like the tee you’ve had for ten years, on day one.

How to wear it

White tee under an open striped oxford, jeans, loud sneakers if you own them. It is a daytime shirt.