When Trayvon Martin’s hoodie was brought into the courtroom as evidence in George Zimmerman’s murder trial, one Martin family supporter said he felt as though he was looking at an iconic piece of history. And now the director of the the Smithsonian museum has indicated he would “love” to house the piece of clothing. “I get goose bumps just thinking about it,” recalls Michael Skolnik, political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and a member of the Trayvon Martin Foundation board. Skolnik, in fact, told the Washington Post that Martin’s hoodie—which the unarmed teenager wore the night Zimmerman shot him in the chest during a scuffle, killing him—is “like this mythical garment.” The Rev. Al Sharpton—an early advocate for Martin who organized nationwide rallies after Zimmerman’s not-guilty verdict—said during a cell phone call that he “would like to see [the hoodie] preserved,” the Post reported. “The hoodie now represents an image of an urban street kid that either embraces or engages in street thug life,” Sharpton has said.

“I think it’s unfair.” In order to redefine that image, Sharpton has indicated his desire to see Martin’s hoodie end up in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, now under construction on the Mall and expected to open in 2015. The Post indicates that Lonnie Bunch, director of the museum, would “love” to add Marin’s hoodie. “It became the symbolic way to talk the Trayvon Martin case. arsenal christmas jumper for saleIt’s rare that you get one artifact that really becomes the symbol,” Bunch said. wifey hoodie australia“Because it’s such a symbol, it would allow you to talk about race in the age of Obama.”tvxq hoodies While the desire to display Martin’s hoodie might seem odd, it’s not completely out of the ordinary for the museum to feature, shall we say, unique displays.gildan hoodies price philippines

The design is incredibly simple: It’s just a list of names on a t-shirt. Some of them—Trayvon (Martin), Eric (Garner), Mike (Brown)—are recent household names. Some—Emmett (Till), Amadou (Diallo)—first entered the public consciousness years ago. And still others—Oscar (Grant), Jordan (Davis), Ezell (Ford)—are more obscure. All of them, though, were black, unarmed, and killed under circumstances that made them symbols of racial injustice.abercrombie and fitch hoodie singapore Amid recent debate over the US legal system’s handling of the deaths of Brown and Garner, both killed by police officers, sales of the shirts have surged. botdf hoodieSome 500 orders came in last month, according to the shirts’ designer, 24-year-old Ryan Arrendell, who sells them as part of her small fashion label, GLOSSRAGS. mylar hoodie

Through the end of last week, that accounted for more than 40% of all the orders she’s received since she put the shirts up for sale in April. “After someone dies, you definitely see a spike in sales,” she says. Arrendell’s shirts are a somber iteration of a widespread design meme. Stripped-down lists, usually in sleek Helvetica font, became fairly ubiquitous after 2001, when Amsterdam graphic design shop Experimental Jetset created what it called the “&&&-shirt” for Japanese brand 2K/Gingham. The shirt—with John&Paul&Ringo&George.—was a bare-bones Beatles homage. “Our idea was to strip down the idea of a rock band to a list of four names, in an attempt to reach the essence of a group,” the company wrote in a piece explaining the aesthetic origins of the shirt. The Beatles shirts went viral, and copycats began making similar lists for everything from basketball teams to video game characters—putting them not just on shirts but on pins, totebags, and the like.

Arrendell got the idea for her t-shirt during last year’s 50th anniversary celebration of the March on Washington in the US capital. As she recounts on her website, she carried a sign echoing the &&&-shirt design during the event. Other people at the event repeatedly stopped her and asked to take pictures. After the march, she went home, sketched out a t-shirt shape on a Post-it note, scribbled the design down, and held onto it just in case. A few months later, after consulting with a mentor about how to get the project started, she borrowed $500 from him to make an initial run of 100 shirts. They sold well when she debuted them at a local festival in her native Washington, D.C. “It just made sense,” she tells Quartz. “The issues surrounding these men and women’s deaths are complex, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they need to be memorialized in an overly complex way.” For months, the shirts sold modestly for $20 a piece—$25 after she upgraded her shirt vendors—on her website.

She put most of the proceeds back into making more shirts. (She also put some of the money toward a donation to the Trayvon Martin Foundation.) Arrendell says she understands if some would criticize her for profiting on tragedy. “I think it’s good that people are suspicious of things like this,” she says. “It’s good to have questions.” Arrendell graduated last year from Northwestern University, where she majored in journalism and African American studies. She moved home to Washington to help take care of an ailing grandfather, and has been supporting herself with odd jobs. “I’ve been waiting tables, substitute teaching, working in retail, babysitting,” she says. And updating her t-shirt design. The first shirts Arrendell made had six names on them. This summer, she worked on a redesign, adding the names of Garner, the New York man who died in July after a police officer placed him in a chokehold, and Ford, who was shot and killed by police in Los Angeles in August.

Two days after she sent the revisions to her printer, a police officer shot Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Soon she was getting requests to add Brown’s name to the shirts as well. The new version of the shirt, which included Brown’s name, was available for sale by September. The shirts were quickly embraced as part of the the grief, outrage, and protest that followed Brown’s death. People have been asking where this shirt came from. http://t.co/nWkM9aR1WG, go get you one. — Alexis (@MusicOverPeople) October 25, 2014 DeRay Mckesson, an activist and prolific tweeter who has spent time protesting in Ferguson, says he was struck by the design’s directness when he first saw the shirt online. “It humanizes the victims because it has names, but it also reminds you that these are not one-offs,” he says. In October he began adding a link to Arrendell’s site in a newsletter he puts together. “Click here to purchase one of the now iconic shirts that lists of the names of the victims of black lives lost in state violence,” the latest edition reads, under the heading “Your Role in the Movement.”

There’s also a version of the shirt with the names of women. All of them—Eleanor (Bumpurs), Tarika (Wilson), Rekia (Boyd), Renisha (McBride), Yvette (Smith)—were unarmed when they were killed, except for Bumpurs, whom police officers shot in the hand and chest after she lunged at one of them with a knife. Arrendell isn’t sure what she wants to do with her clothing brand going forward. The one-time NPR intern says she wants to get back to journalism or pursue shirt designs with more levity. But for now, Arrendell feels a duty to keep making the grim reminders. And the names—they keep coming. In October, a Michigan judge dropped an involuntary manslaughter charge against the officer who shot and killed 7-year-old Aiayana Stanley-Jones during a police raid being filmed for the A&E true-crime reality show The First 48. In November, just days before a grand jury in Missouri decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson’s for killing Brown, 28-year-old Akai Gurley of was killed by New York police in a Brooklyn housing project—officials called it “an unfortunate accident.”