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“we were frustrated and frankly deeply annoyed by the array of imagery options in clothing available to our kids. we decided to offer something wondrously different - at a reasonable price.”

Just as what you choose to adorn yourself in reflects your personal style and personality, choosing the clothing your child has access to nourishes their sense of self + self expression.

Stephanie + Sophi met in 2018 + began banana slug. in 2019.
They were fated to be firm friends + collaborators with a similar world view, plus a mutual insatiable need/love of coffee, the outdoors, wine, and
design that makes your soul sing.

They have a growing tribe of little humans aged 5 and under.

Designed + printed in New Zealand, banana slug. t-shirts + adornments are conceptual pieces created to inspire the imagination and nourish the curious child in all of us.

We use responsibly sourced t-shirts and carefully chosen professional printers who share our commitment to high quality and ethical business practices.
Truly the very best of both worlds.


We would love to hear from you and what has lead you here, and what you are looking for for your child.

 

Get in touch.

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OUR PRIORITIES

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SIZE MATTERS

Most of our T-shirts are available in sizes kids sizes 2 - 10,
and are true to size.
Below is our Size Guide.

So how did we come to our apple design? Believe it or not it all started with this fabulous artist: Tatsuya Tanaka. We loved his imaginative, immersive small world work. It embodied something of the escapist whimsical magic we were after for some of our designs. We set out to create something more silk screen friendly and child focused that was entirely our own. So how did we get from small worlds to peeled apples? Follow our journey this week to find out. You can explore and support his fantastic work here: https://miniature-calendar.com/
Each week we are going to focus on a different banana slug. t-shirt and tell you the story behind its design. First up will be ‘Star of the Apple’, our scrumptious Apple Tee design that is available on the gorgeous golden yellow tee pictured, or on a fresh rich green tee. Keep an eye out for our next post! #behindthescenes #bananaslugkidsclothing #bananaslug #kidstee #kidsclothing #responsiblysourced #handdrawn #design #buylocal #newzealand
We love our Natural Avocado Blush Pink hand-dyed tees and it seems a fair few of you do too! We will be doing a new series of avocado blush pink dye batches this coming week and wanted to give you all a chance to pre-order and secure your special tee in advance. PRE-ORDERS for this batch are available TONIGHT until MON 14 SEPTEMBER! We are offering the Avo Blush Pink dye in Kid Sizes 2-10 Years for three of our white tee designs - Bunny Blue, Snake and Coy Koi. These can be pre-ordered on our website. www.bananaslug.co.nz + each one is hand dyed and one-of-a-kind taking different patterns and intensity + a great alternative to commercial chemical dyes + beautiful and unique + we recommend using a cold water wash and avoiding harsh stain removers (or spot test for color fastness before you go nuts) but otherwise color fast, durable and requires no special handling. Pre-order yours for it to ship out next week! Pre-orders for this batch will close at 12pm Monday September 14th (but there will be more batches down the line once we have another major guacamole craving). #naturaldye #kidstshirts #avocadodye #handdyed #kids #clothing #bananaslugkidsclothing #locallymade
INTERNATIONAL POST We are so glad to see so many wonderful folks from overseas showing interest in our work! We don’t want to leave you out even though our website is only set up to ship to New Zealand at the moment. If you live in the wider world and absolutely need some banana slug. in your life, please contact our e-mail hello@bananaslug.co.nz directly with your order and an international shipping address. We will reply to your e-mail with a Paypal link that you can use to complete your purchase. Happy browsing and thank you so very much for your support! #airmail #internationalpost #paravion #bananaslugkidsclothing #bananaslug #kidsclothing #ethicallymade #responsiblysourced #tshirt #handdrawn #silkscreenprint #handdrawnairmail * please ask permission before using this image.
Our banana slug. t-shirts are all PRE-SHRUNK which means that you won’t encounter any surprise size-changes after that first wash. Want a few other good reasons to choose a banana slug. tee? 💡 UNISEX, KID-CENTRIC, HAND-DRAWN designs by a Mum and a Mom 💡 Made from HIGH QUALITY, SOFT + DURABLE COTTON 💡 ETHICALLY PRODUCED shirts 💡 NZ LOCALLY printed by artisan professionals 💡 A lovely range of COLOURS 💡 ACCESSIBLY PRICED Head to www.bananaslug.co.nz for more! Link in bio. #bananaslugkidsclothing #bananaslug #kidsclothing #unisex #tshirt #tshirts #ethicallymade #responsiblysourced #ungendered #genderneutral #kidcentric #handdrawn #design #kids #clothing #local #nz
It’s been a long time coming (thanks COVID), but we are very proud to announce to you lovely folk that we are wwwonline! We are kid-centric, colourful, un-gendered, hand-drawn designs silk screened on ethically produced and durable cotton items. We focus on high quality products that can be handed down, re-loved, and re-used. We found that a common complaint amongst our peers was that while there are good, affordable gender neutral clothes available for our kids up to the age of about 18 months, once they hit 2 everything becomes hyper-commercialized, hyper-gendered and far lower quality fabric. If you are looking for natural fibers or interesting designs your options are limited, extremely expensive, and often still very, very gendered. We saw a gaping gap in the market. We wanted to provide good design, that appealed across the gender spectrum at the best price we could manage. And so banana slug. was born! Most of our range of designs are available on AS Colour kids T-Shirts in sizes 2-10. We also offer our “Colour-Me-Fancy” kit that includes high quality fabric paint and two items to hand-decorate: our Coy Koi T-Shirt, and/or Tea Towel. Head to our www for more. Link in bio. 🌕
Today I woke up to this card and two very excited boys bouncing on the bed and inviting me to come to a party. One kept singing Happy Birthday to Mother’s Day. It was pretty sweet. I have it on good authority this picture is of me, wearing a crown, in a brown castle with two towers. “Because that’s where Queens live.” These are mad days ladies and I know I am not the only one struggling at times, endless days of isolation and extra responsibilities- it is an impossible situation at best. But even though it may feel rotten, and even though we are all still probably in PJs, the kids can still see our crowns. Wishing all the Moms and Mother figures a fabulous day and the strength to keep up the amazing work. ❤️
Love. This week I was thinking about love. That in the great steaming heap of things we are supposed to worry about, make time for, put effort into, photograph, post, comment on, pack, unpack, wash, tidy, check, pass on, sign, remember… I find the marketing of things like love… odd…and a little uncomfortable. When showing our dear ones how they are loved becomes yet another task to arrange, thing to buy, gesture to contrive it feels a lot more like work to me. These days I show love overtly as the yin to the yang of toddler-insanity-induced rage or kisses hello and goodbye, good morning and good night. I soothe the hurt and sick, we snuggle in quiet moments and, sure, we tell each other “I love you” but all these (while nice) happen in prescribed ways that end up feeling automatic. Yes, you snuggle the mortally wounded (and yet miraculously not bleeding) child and the arms and chest are there but somewhere you are wondering if you remembered to turn the tap off in the kitchen before you came down here and are maybe a little annoyed at having been interrupted. Between the mundane love, the auto-pilot love, the obligatory love and the commercially scheduled love you have to wonder where you fit in the real stuff. Not the stuff of high passion, but the foundation -- that bedrock of love in your bones that requires no effort. Like water flowing downhill, natural and as refreshing as the rain. I worry sometimes since we are not the most vocal people about our emotions in our house. I mean, don’t get me wrong- we talk about our feelings- but I suppose like most of us with most things we end up worrying if we are getting it quite right... or worse, getting it really wrong. Then we have a moment like today in the course of a day that was just like any other day, when nothing in particular was happening out of the ordinary. I was buckling the kids into the car and saw that one was shrinking away from the sun in his face. Without thought, as easy as breathing and so automatically I surprised even myself, I shifted my weight so that my head shaded his face while I finished putting on his straps. [continued in comments]