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“Do you want a beer? I’m picking up some more,” Josh Harvey says as he darts out the door and onto Chimes Street. His brother Seth is serving up the last of the homemade jambalaya, and a band led by Greg Talmage is scratching acoustic guitars and thumping djembe drums in the adjoining space, a living room screaming with framed propaganda courtesy of Icon Visuals. Did I mention that T-shirts are everywhere? On mannequins, on shelves, in Kodak photos push-pinned onto every surface of the walls.

This was the scene Feb. 1 at the grand opening for Storyville, a designer T-shirt shop and art gallery owned and operated by the Harvey-Durham family of siblings—all 11 of them. That tally includes four recently adopted from a Colombian orphanage, but the five oldest—Josh, 28, Seth, 27, Gabriel 24, Mercie, 23, and Elizabeth, 22—run the show at Storyville.

An attorney based in New York City, Josh Harvey was just recently convinced by his brothers and sisters to move back to Baton Rouge to help run their proposed T-shirt emporium.

“They had been to visit me and had seen [Brooklyn’s DIY T-shirt outlet] Neighborhoodies, and thought ‘How can this not work on Chimes Street?’” Josh Harvey recalls. “I just looked at the move as a chance to come home and work with local artists and have some fun with my family.”

In a town where T-shirts are worn practically year-round, a place like Storyville that stylishly prints any phrase a customer wants onto a shirt can become a de facto mouthpiece for any number of subcultures and a controversial sounding board for ideas that wouldn’t otherwise transform easily into fashion statements. “I have three siblings in LSU right now,” says Josh Harvey. “We don’t want to piss off the university. At the same time, it’s a free speech issue. If somebody came in and wanted to get ‘LSU charges too much tuition’ printed, we’d make that shirt.”

More important than encouraging original thought, and maybe a little activism, Storyville periodically hosts meet-the-designer nights, DJs, acoustic musicians and art shows. Storyville supports predominantly Baton Rouge and Louisiana-based T-shirt designers, and by drawing this line in the sand, it seems to have galvanized a local art movement that, according to several designers, has reached full bloom in the city.

“It’s just perfect timing for Storyville because there are so many people designing now,” says 21-year-old Rachelle Berkley, who makes T-shirts with her husband Josh under the glim+glam label. The Berkleys married young and will graduate with studio art degrees from LSU next month. Often their shirts are satirical, graphically-rich drawings or visual pop art puns. One shirt replaces a scoop of ice cream in a sugar cone with a pink hand grenade.

Local shirts appeal to people in the same way any other form of original artwork might, Berkley says. “People love supporting artists and supporting people they know. They see value in being connected to the designer in some way.”

SuperMaggie is a Storyville supplier run by another husband-and-wife design team, Maggie Kleinpeter, 31, and Michael Pittard, 38. They echo Berkley’s sentiment. “Everything is so mass-produced,” Kleinpeter says. “But these shirts are special. And I think people like the idea of being able to meet the person who made it.”

SuperMaggie launched in Brooklyn a few years ago while Kleinpeter studied at Hunter College. On the strength of coverage in Real Simple, Teen Vogue and New York magazine, SuperMaggie has grown to supply more than 80 retail stores nationwide and even one in Brighton, U.K. The company thrives on e-commerce, which made the move back to Louisiana a non-issue for the bottom line. Still, Storyville gives Kleinpeter and Pittard a more immediate platform in their hometown.

Pittard sees the trend toward local T-shirts as a reaction against chains that sell clothing made overseas in poor conditions. SuperMaggie, like Storyville, prints its designs on shirts made by the L.A.-based sweatshop-free manufacturer, American Apparel. As for what goes on those shirts, Kleinpeter finds inspiration in her Spanish Town backyard. “I watch the birds back there,” she says. “I’ve always had a fascination with them. The other animals are just a natural extension of that.”

SuperMaggie’s earth-toned, classical designs stand out even at Storyville, where most shirts are comical or at least make some type of statement. “I wanted shirts that were honest, not snarky or ironic,” Kleinpeter says. “Sometimes people don’t want to make a statement.”

But many do. And Storyville is banking on it.

“We’ve had emo kids, professors, sororities, fraternities, skater punks,” says Josh Harvey. “We want to facilitate any kind of expression. We want to be the one place for everybody, as long as they have something to say.” According to Storyville’s short-term lease, though, they better say it this year. The Harvey’s 12-month contract—the longest Latter & Blum would provide them—is up in January, a fact not lost on those who fear Chimes Street’s character-rich local businesses will soon be forced out to make way for more chain retailers and pricey condos, not unlike what happened on West State Street two years ago.

Josh and Seth Harvey first lived near Chimes Street when they grew up in married student housing while their parents attended LSU. Mom Mercedes Harvey worked at the original Co-Op on West State Street where The Venue development now stands. Josh Harvey thinks Storyville could survive in another location near campus, he’d just rather not test the theory. Chimes Street feels like home, and the Harveys are going to do everything they can to stay put.

“The North Gate area is really special and unique for the city,” he says. “It’s a historical place, and we hope people stand up for it—not for selfish motives, just for the sake of the neighborhood.”