Trend: Obama merch

Right: Earrings by Donatella Quintavalle

Step off, Che Guevara; Barack Obama’s stealing your title as lord of the T-shirts. The President-elect’s mug is everywhere these days, from the 310 Discount Mall on Canal Street, where the shirts start at $8, to the priciest boutiques where, yes, you can pay $100 for Obama-faced 100-percent cotton. Have we finally reached “change” overload?

At the Lotto Center bodega in Chelsea, posters of the next commander-in-chief sell for $2 (Eighth Ave between 24th and 25th Sts), while The New York Times website sells a reprint of the Nov 5 postelection issue for $15 (nytstore.com). In the East Village, fashion designer Kate Goldwater mans her shop, AuH2O, with Obama shirts, skirts, dresses and earrings visible in the window (84 E 7th St between First and Second Aves; 212-466-0844, auh2odesigns.com). She named the store after herself, not erstwhile politico Barry; she’s a “huge liberal Democrat” who distributed Obama buttons and stickers during the campaign. After having an “aha” moment in Denver during the Democratic National Convention, she decided to ramp it up by stenciling Obama’s face and name onto her designs. “People want to support their candidate and look cute while doing it,” Goldwater says. “Combine politics and fashion sense.”

Goldwater sold two or three pieces per day and gave 10 percent of the proceeds to the campaign. After the election, she figured she’d wind down production, but demand is still there. “I’m not doing it to profit off it,” she says. “People still want to be wearing them.”

Over in Soho, English-born designer Andrew Buckler had Obama’s face stenciled onto his eponymous storefront, Buckler, as a political statement (93 Grand St at Greene St, 212-925-1711). Then, according to store manager Jarred Gilker, customers began inquiring whether they could get that face on a shirt. Buckler made 50 black cotton shirts, pricing them at $100 a pop, and only a few remain. The face on the window is gone now, but not because it had provoked people to complain to 311. As Gilker puts it, “It was time to change.”

Barack Obama won New York State with more than 62 percent of the vote, but not everyone was onboard with the idea. “All the people who were selling Obama T-shirts will be the T-shirt salesmen of the apocalypse,” says Noel Black of Crown Heights.

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