Jessica Herman

How real is Mr. Toast, the 84-year-old guy who hand-makes every piece of Sharp As Toast "wearable drama"? Jimm Lasser would tell you that Toast--a 100-percent-fabricated character--is about as real as any brand.

With a Vanderbilt law degree under his belt, Lasser opted to capitalize on his creativity rather than corporate America a few years ago. Picking up where he left off with illustrating comic strips in college, Lasser went to work for a small design company, Planet Propaganda, in Madison. That's when he generated the self-described "3-D comic world" of Sharp As Toast, eventually selling his creations in Chicago boutiques and UrbanOutfitters.com. "I took my understanding of branding and turned it into how t-shirts could be a billboard for people to change messages," he says in a discreet phone conversation from the office of his New York job, a global branding firm called Enterprise Identity. (He's checking out "the other side of the coin," he says.) Now he relies heavily on his own website, Sharpastoast.com, for business.

It's a real mom-and-pop deal: His parents' home in Winnetka functions as the shipping department where Lasser's dad pulls orders of t-shirts from the attic (which Lasser refers to as "the warehouse"). He "perpetuates the brand" by slipping random old photographs or coasters into every package so people can have a "piece of Mr. Toast."

For the most part, his shirts fall somewhere between stupid, smart, political, historical and crass; his seventies-style presidential-themed tees--such as "Keep It Coolidge" and "Hoover's Your Daddy"-are perhaps the most popular. Flexing his "history buff" biceps, Lasser's also making a line of sweatshirts onto which he sews World War II army patches that he ordered from the government.

Every shirt has a story. "I saw this illustration that had Lincoln and his mom, and she was really pretty. It essentially looked like Lincoln being massaged," he says, describing the inspiration for his newest shirt entitled "Fourscore." "So I added two bimbos and there you go."

Proud of his limited-edition shirts, Lasser concludes, "We're rewarding your special person. You don't have to be replaced by some corporation."

(2004-10-27)

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Spin Control
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To the Gill
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The art of the discount
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