About
The shirt, the photograph, and the story behind three words
Nuke The Valley is built around one T-shirt: the cult tee Diane Lane wore in a 1984 Andy Warhol photograph. The site sells the shirt in its original style and keeps an archive of writing about where it came from.
The shirt
The tee is a premium quality unisex shirt with the nuke the valley text set in the original style. It comes in men's and women's fits, in multiple colors, and in sizes from S to 4XL. Orders are handled through Redbubble, which is where the Get the Shirt and Shop Now buttons on the home page lead.
The home page is built around that one shirt, its origin story, and the archive that grew out of it.
The origin story
In 1984 a young Diane Lane was photographed by Andy Warhol wearing a simple black tee with three words across the chest: nuke the valley. The photograph is believed to have been taken around the production of Streets of Fire, the Walter Hill neo-noir that cemented Lane as one of the most magnetic screen presences of her generation.
Where the shirt came from is murkier. Rock memorabilia experts have traced it to what may have been a Frank Zappa promo, but the trail does not end cleanly. The site's own summary is the honest one: possibly a Zappa promo, definitely iconic.
The archive
Beyond the shirt, the site runs a blog that follows the threads leading out of that one photograph. There are posts on slogan tees as a genre and how three words on a shirt became a political act, on the Valley versus Hollywood as Los Angeles's oldest cultural war, on the history of Warhol's Factory studios and his celebrity photographs, on Streets of Fire and The Outsiders, on Moon Unit Zappa and the invention of Valspeak, and on Diane Lane's 1984, including her Warhol Interview magazine cover that November.
It is the context the shirt deserves: pop art, Los Angeles geography, eighties film and rock memorabilia, all pointing back at the same picture.
Who runs it and how it is funded
nukethevalley.com is a Scout Theory property, as the footer says. The shirt itself is sold through Redbubble. Some links in the archive go to Amazon, where the site takes part in the Amazon Associates program; the details are in the disclosure below.
Questions about the shirt, the archive or the photograph can be sent through the contact page.