If you’re looking for a guide on how to buy high-quality, comfortable, and creator-made gay apparel online, this is for you!

There are many gay apparel sellers on the internet, but not all gay apparel sellers are made equal. Here are our 4 tips on what to look for when making a decision on where you’ll buy your next gay visibility item!

The most high-quality type of printing is screenprinting. Screenprinting works like a large stencil, with ink being pushed through a screen directly onto the garment. Prints are vibrant, soft, and long-lasting. 

At Simple Gay Apparel, we pride ourselves on softness and quality, screen-printing all of our materials. 

Print-on-Demand (POD) shirts involve a cheaper, but quicker method, also called Direct-to-Garment (DTG). DTG print quality is satisfactory, though not as vibrant as screen printing. It’s quicker to rub off, and because it is printed through a printer, sometimes has issues with "lines" interrupting the graphic.

Always check for real photos of products. Apparel companies will often put their designs on mockups, which can be done through Photoshop or any other photo editing software, and means what you see isn’t necessarily what you get. You don’t know what shape and material of shirt they’re actually printing on, you don’t know how big the design will be, and you don’t know what the print quality looks like. They likely are printing DTG (direct to garment) on a cheap blank, and the result is you get a shirt in the mail that isn’t what it appeared to be from the photos online.

We recommend carefully examining photos for lighting and distortions to check if the product and design is actually photographed with the printed design and is actually being worn by the model, not just edited on. 

Below, drag the bar over the hat to see how a mock-up of our bisexuali-tea hat compares with an actual photograph. Note the smoothness of the mock-up, and the sharp contrast of the design against the flat hat. Compare with the photo of the same hat: there is texture in both the hand and design, dynamic lighting, the hat is wrinkled. It's real.

Sus out brands’ legitness by checking out their Instagram and other socials. How people are interacting with the content? Are they real people with real quotes and real thoughts?

In a world replete with AI-generated content, carefully pay attention to the way comments are phrased. Giveaways that a comment may be bot-created include repetitive sentence structure, lots of Emojis, and generic profile.

See this review on our "fruity" - Peach shirt. The commentor lists her first and last name, and gives just a little extra detail — spotting us at Harvard Square — that gives an air of legitimacy to her words.

Lots of online shops steal designs from others. It happened to us here at Simple Gay Apparel. Make sure you do a quick search of the design to see to make sure you can’t find the originals. Be especially careful buying from Etsy or other “craft” websites, because they often resell designs taken from other creators, or dropship.

Here, an Amazon shop sells a Tote bag that looks almost identical to Simple Gay Apparel's "Bitches Love a Bag" Tote. Also note the uncannily smooth design, evidence that this picture is also a mock-up of the tote and not the tote itself.