Shirt Front shirt a new favourite with Brisbanites for G20

Make your feelings known at the G20 in Brisbane with the summit's hottest new accoutrement - a Shirt Front Putin t-shirt.

Brisbane bookshop owner Fiona Stager said her shirts sent a visual raspberry to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"It's a challenge to Tony Abbott, and how he chose to use language and represent Australia in the world. You have to think very carefully about the words you use when speaking on the international stage," she said.

"And I don't think that was the correct use of language. Putin does need to be challenged but that's not the correct, grown-up way to do it."

Ms Stager also said there was no doubt the Russian president had some serious questions to answer over the downing of flight MH17.

And she said Mr Putin must be held to account too over his government's attacks on free speech, typified by the jailing of members of the anti-Putin Russian punk band Pussy Riot.

She hopes her t-shirts will be everywhere on what she's dubbed Shirt Front Friday, ahead of the official start to the G20 summit of world leaders on Saturday. But anyone who wants one had better be quick.

"I've been inundated with people wanting them. I spent all day yesterday fielding emails," Ms Stager says.

The owner of the Avid Reader Bookshop at West End, just outside the G20 security zone, is handing over the t-shirts in exchange for donations for a cause close to her heart - literacy.

"There is a serious part to our message. If world leaders want to talk about economic growth, they need to talk about literacy," she said.

"Over 700 million people in the world are illiterate and we should do something about that."

Proceeds from the t-shirts will go to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.