Every single person from Vancouver, Washington, has had the conversation at least fifty times. They say where they are from and someone says oh Canada and they say no, Washington, and then they have to explain that Washington state has a Vancouver too, has had one since 1825, and it is sitting right across the Columbia River from Portland with its own identity and its own history and its own very specific reasons to be proud that have nothing to do with being confused for a Canadian city. Strange Allies made this tee for the women who are done explaining and would rather just wear it.

Vancouver arches across the front in heavy cracked collegiate lettering, distressed all the way through, the kind of print that looks like it belongs to someone who has been repping this city since before it started getting any of the attention it deserved. Washington sits below in a faded stamp box, grounding the whole thing to the correct side of the river with no ambiguity. The Y2K cut fits cropped and close at your size, easy and draped when you go up one, which covers everything from a Washington State University Vancouver campus event to a trail run through Lacamas Lake Regional Park when the gorge is doing something spectacular with the light.

Wear it to the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site on a morning when the whole area smells like grass and river water and history. Wear it to an Esther Short Park event in the summer when downtown Vancouver finally gets the crowd it has always deserved. Wear it across the Interstate Bridge into Portland for a Trail Blazers game and back again, because Vancouver women make that crossing like it is nothing because it genuinely is nothing to them. The Clark College crowd and the WSU Vancouver students have been living this tee's entire energy for years without having the right piece of clothing to show for it until now.

For the woman who grew up in Hazel Dell or Salmon Creek or Felida and has a completely internal map of this city that no app has ever gotten right. For the transplant who moved to the area expecting a Portland suburb and found something that had its own gravitational pull entirely. For anyone in your life who has ever gotten visibly irritated at the Canada confusion and deserves something that makes that frustration wearable and frankly stylish.

A gift for a Vancouver, Washington, person does not need to be complicated. It needs to be correct. This tee is correct. It is also the only souvenir that requires zero explanation to the right person and zero further conversation about Canada.

Strange Allies. Washington side, no footnotes.