It seems today that easily the most commercial Prince offering is not music or a movie, but rather the omnipresent Purple Rain t-shirt.

It's out there on almost the same level as the Nirvana, AC/DC shirts or whatever else people buy at Target.

So when I see people wearing this version of the Purple Rain t-shirt this I assume they're not really fans, but they bought the shirt ecause it was there and other people wear it.

So, cut to the chase....

I'm at my local dispensary this week wearing my Paisley Park purple hoodie and some guy says something to the effect of "Purple People" and it takes me a second.

A fellow Prince fan; a sort-of next-level Prince reference.

Very cool.

Ever happen to you?

Meeting a fellow fan in the wild?

---------------------

These are the days of wild!!

No, but I don't think I'd walk up to them either way. I got a Prince shirt custom made a few months ago and have worn it twice so far but nobody said anything.

whenever I run into someone with a pocket full of Trojans i'm like

I was recently gifted a Purple Rain t-shirt by a friend, and it took some inner adjustment before I could wear it unironically. Such a cliche, but still, a great album, eh? He does have other albums, though . . .

I once got a "Woah . . . that's rare" with a smile of wonderment, in the summer of 2014, from a man near Union Square in NYC, over my Lotusflow3r t-shirt, which I'd gotten unexpectedly in the mail, as I recall, because a batch were sent to those who'd bought the Crystal Ball set a few years earlier.

And it was a moving experience to take the metro to the Prince memorial shortly after he died, and see more and more Purple People in the buses and train cars converge onto Los Angeles City Hall with you, wearing every kind of Prince gear: sometimes it wasn't anything specific or even purple but you could tell from the overall look that you had something in common.

I had people stare at the various Prince shirts I wear around town and even a gasp at the symbol bomber jacket I got from the Immersive Experience store, but noone has approached me as of yet. The reactions do make me chuckle, tho.

Oh, I've had MANY experiences over the years, both with people complimenting my gear, or me noticing someone else's. Most recently, I got into a conversation with a vet tech when I took my dog in for her annual exam. I was wearing a Prince shirt (Sign O the Times), and she lit up "oh, you like Prince?". We talked for a while, and she told me to check out her car on the way out, which was decorated with a couple stickers and a symbol license plate frame.

ShellyMcG said:

Not personally. But I remember a friend of mine telling me that when he was in New York he was wearing a Prince symbol T-shirt and some homeless guy approached him and talked to him for ages about Prince and the homeless guy was telling him all about how to access bootlegs online of the Sign O' The Times rehearsals.

Well that's "interesting".

In 1997, at the Jam Of The Year concert, I was wearing a custom-made T-shirt and was approached quite a few times asking me which kiosk I bought it from (because they wanted one).

But right after Prince passed, I was wearing the Starfish and Coffee T-shirt that Susannah put out, and I got a lot of people who recognized and liked that T-Shirt.

paisleyparkgirl said: