Merch has long been a staple in the music lover’s wardrobe. You see your favorite band live, or visit their website and buy their merch, but you almost never have a say in their design. They may be your favorite band sonically, but sometimes their merch game is lacking. That’s where bands like the Grateful Dead and Vampire Weekend differ. Sure, they sell officially licensed merch, but their fans have built a community off bootleg merch designs.

Bootleg merch is not a new thing, you can find it anywhere, but what differentiates these two bands, in particular, is they embrace the bootlegged merch and have integrated it almost seamlessly into their personas. Instagram accounts such as FromTheFreezer and FromTheLot serve as digital archives for fan-made bootlegs, establishing a community where fans can connect and draw inspiration for their own designs.  Vampire Weekend Frontman Ezra echoed this sentiment in Rolling Stone, “I really like the amount of homemade tie-dye jobs and bootleg merch I’ve been seeing at shows. I think there’s something about this album (2019s Father of the Bride) that, maybe because of all these symbols, encourages people to do their own thing with it. It obviously feels good to sell a bunch of merch, but it also feels good to look out see that people took the symbols and made their own hats and shirts.”

On the Grateful Dead side, LA based Online Ceramics have gone from part of the Bootleg community, to designing for Dead and Co. shows and establishing a full Grateful Dead collection known as Turtle River. It is no secret that this started with music, fans adorning at the sonics blasting from their guitars to (in Vampire Weekends case) Sonic the hedgehog based bootleg T- Shirts. The bootleg merch of these bands has established a community that expands beyond their music and establishes connections and relatations amongst their fans.