:: About Us
About Us
In September 2003 little-known indie tunesmith Peter Doherty was sent to prison for a minor bout of burglary. Two young
Libertines' fans, drunk on injustice, set about hatching a cunning plan to bust their drug-addled hero out of chokey. With
minimal locksmith skills and limited criminal know-how our two heroes decided on the next best course of action… the "Free
Pete Doherty" ...err... t-shirt.
Retro Clothing & Accessories
With a borrowed two hundred quid and a deft design, a limited run of "Free Petes" was printed at a screenprinters
in Kentish Town, North London. The shirts sold out in under a week! A glint of inspiration flashed across the two indie upstarts
eyes and Balcony Shirts was born.
In more recent and sober times, Balcony Shirts has evolved into an entire retro clothes shop. Despite our charmingly
misleading name we sell all kinds of retro get-up - mainly T-shirts, which we both print ourselves and import from the
USA, as well as trainers, plimsoles, shoes, jackets, sweatshirts, hoodies, belts, watches, bags, wallets, sunglasses
and loads more.
The Original 'Free Pete' T-Shirt
We pretty much stock anything and everything with a retro or vintage flavour that we love. We want to be the only place
worth visiting for great fitting, hard-to-find retro garb.
Oh and by the way; if you bought one of our original Free Pete t-shirts, they have kind of gone down in rock 'n roll folklore.
The tees were seen on the BBC News, have
since been mentioned in a couple of books
and we still wear ours around Balcony HQ
from time to time. Cheers Pete!