8-Bit Desire

Two designers from Lisbon—Sebastião and Cesaria—put pixel-art underwear on Indiegogo and asked the internet if this was something it wanted. The answer was presumably yes, because the internet contains multitudes, and one of those multitudes has spent its entire adult life waiting for Super Mario iconography to be rendered in fabric across someone’s body.

I am, apparently, part of that multitude. The things look genuinely good—that 8-bit grid pattern triggers some lizard-brain combination of childhood nostalgia and present-tense appreciation for what’s wearing it. Nintendo never put a half-naked model in their games. This corrects that oversight.

Whether you’d wear these yourself or prefer to be on the observing end of the equation probably depends on your relationship to retro gaming aesthetics and your willingness to make a statement with your underwear. My boxer shorts don’t need a thesis. But on someone else? Yes. Obviously yes.