A T-Shirt History: From Underwear to Outerwear By Mark E. Dixon, Associate Editor When tracing the history of imprinted sportswear, the first issue is: Which came first? The imprinting? Or the sportswear? As with chickens and eggs, the dilemma is not resolved. People have been both wearing clothes and drawing pictures for a considerably long time. Mesa, Ariz., screen printer / airbrusher Spider likes to tell the (possibly apocryphal) story of the Chinese merchant who, about 2500 B.C., combined the even-then old art of stenciling and then-current rage at the Emperor's court -- decorated robes -- to produce an early printed garment. "I'm not sure where that story comes from," said Spider, "but even today I can see that old Chinaman's reasoning: There was a big market for a printed garment and it was faster and cheaper to stencil it than to paint it by hand." Those who insist that sportswear is the critical ingredient in this industry, though, may prefer to trace its history to the mid-19th Century when trendy young gentlemen's "base ball" clubs began to appear in marked garments. The date of this development is uncertain, although an old photograph in the collection of the National Baseball Hall of Game, Cooperstown, N.Y., shows that the Atlantics of Brooklyn wore emblems of crossed baseball bats when the beat the New York Excelsiors in 1860. (Like many sportswear consumers of today, the Atlantics liked their accessories flashy. Their printed shirts were complemented by the ballooning, bright red pants which marked many volunteer soldiers as inviting targets for Confederate sharpshooters at the Battle of Bull Run the following year.) For really hard cases, who insist that there is no imprinted sportswear without the T-shirt, the story probably begins more recently, although no less obscurely. There is, for instance, "The British Story," of which Harold Lipson, a retired senior vice president of Champion Products, Rochester, N.Y., is a proponent. According to Lipson, sailors in the Royal Navy before the turn of the century wore a sleeveless undergarment similar to today's tank top, but made of a heavy, woolen fabric. This was considered the daily uniform for shipboard duties, he said, with dress uniforms being saved for special occasions. That changed, said Lipson, late in the reign of Queen Victoria (1819-1901) when a member of royalty -- perhaps the queen herself -- was scheduled to inspect the fleet. "The brass apparently looked at their men and decided that sweaty, hairy underarms were not a fit sight for royalty," he explained. "They ordered the men to sew sleeves on their underwear." Other explanations for the appearance of the T-shirt are less complete. Indeed, several researchers suggest that the garment just spontaneously evolved during the 1920s, a product of changing habits and advancing technology. For instance, Vincent Minetti, a fashion expert with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, noted that the appearance of lighter underwear coincided with the appearance of central heat. "Generally, people dress to be comfortable," he said. "When houses were cold and drafty, and the only source of heat was the fireplace, they wore long, heavy underwear to keep warm. When houses became more comfortable, people got out of their long johns." In that chilly period before the furnace, the undergarment of choice was the union suit, a button-front, drop-seat affair which reached from neck to knees. It came in either cotton or wool and, each year, the transition from summer to winter was marked by millions of U.S. men as they got into their "woolies." Women wore similar garments. The union suit was, until well after World War I, the chief product of Union Underwear, Bowling Green, Ky., and the item from which the firm took its name. But Everett Moore, retired chairman of the board at Union, said the union suit's popularity began to trail off in the 1920s. "A lot of young people just didn't like it," he said. "In earlier years, they wouldn't have had any choice, but the light knits were beginning to show up and people were wearing separate undershirts and undershorts." Union, said Moore, began manufacturing undershorts in 1932, thus providing something of a landmark by which to date the abandonment of the union suit. Ingrid Mendelsohn, a researcher with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, contends that the transition from heavy to light underwear began during World War I. The American Expeditionary Force was sent to France in 1917, she noted, wearing long-sleeved wool undershirts. However, said Mendelsohn, more than a few doughboys shed their regulation undergarments "over there" and came home in the French military's light, knit-cotton undershirts. These shirts were still sleeveless, however. Minetti repeated this story, although maintaining that, even after the Great War, U.S. underwear was still a far cry from today's T-shirt. "Underwear was still long and it wasn't even all cotton," he said. "Some of what the A.E.F. brought home was silk. The thing the boys really took to in France was the lightness and comfort." In any case, the T-shirt had appeared -- in more or less its present form -- by the early 1930s. And no sooner did that happen than various people began to print on them. Lipson at Champion noted that his company sold its first order of printed T-shirts to an Ann Arbor, Mich., sport shop in 1933. Those shirts, printed with University of Michigan designs, may or may not have been the first printed T-shirts, but Lipson believes they were the beginning of the retail market. "Sweaters were our primary business then," recalled Lipson. "We flocked them with the names of different colleges and they used them for their athletic teams and so forth. "The store in Ann Arbor was the first place to just stock a printed garment and sell it to people off the street." As with Champion's sweaters, the T-shirts were also flocked, Lipson said. The company was not then equipped to print with any other method, he explained, adding that T-shirts were probably chosen for retail because they were cheap and, thus, less of a risk for shop owners unsure of this new market. As the market grew, however, Champion shifted to screen printing, said Lipson. Also in the '30s, someone began to have bright ideas about the T-shirt as an advertising and souvenir item. In fact, Mendelsohn noted that the "Wizard of Oz" T-shirt -- a byproduct of the 1939 film -- is highly valued by collectors today. Still, printed T-shirts -- in fact, T-shirts in general -- were apparently still too novel for the general public. Off campus, they were just underwear, and not even the most popular type of underwear. According to Moore and others, the most popular undershirt in the 1930s was the sleeveless A-shirt, or tank top. It's popularity, however, was short-lived. Blame Clark Gable for that. Gable did for undershirts what the late President John F. Kennedy did for hats. Like Kennedy, who appeared bareheaded at his 1961 inauguration and thus put hat sales into a nosedive, Gable helped strangle undershirt sales when he took off his dress shirt in the 1934 film, "It Happened One Night," to reveal only...skin. Sales of the A-shirt never did pick up again with young men, said Moore, noting that it took another war to get them to change their underwear habits. (Ironically, it took another actor to bring undershirts out into the open, but more on that later.) In 1942, the U.S. Navy delivered specifications for the T-shirt to each of its underwear suppliers, thus insuring that each of the hundreds of thousands of men who served aboard ship in World War II would become intimately familiar with this garment before they again saw civilian life. "I'm not sure why the Navy specified the T-shirt," said Clarence Abernathy, vice president of marketing for Russell Corp.'s knit apparel division. "Maybe it was just the fact that it was a snow-white garment and it looked crisp and clean." Abernathy noted that the T-shirt was subsequently picked up by other branches of the service and that men in each developed the habit of using T's as work garments. In addition, some evidence exists that military personnel, even at this early date, were receptive to the idea of printed undershirts. John H. Neal, for instance, acquired his first printed T-shirt in about 1944 while stationed in New Guinea with the 511th parachute Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division. Neal, now executive vice president of marketing for Stedman Corp., brought the shirt from a comrade who had established his own T-shirt printing business in the jungle. "A member of my company created a design and printed the shirt, probably using a stencil, and sold them to fellow troopers," said Neal. The Stedman executive did not recall the shirt's price, but noted it was more popular than the trinkets which Australian soldiers were making out of spent cartridge casings. "He definitely had a lock on the printed T-shirt market in that area of the south Pacific," said Neal, who wore his shirt through the rest of the war and again during the Korean War. He still has it in his collection of memorabilia. More organized were the marketing efforts of Champion which, according to Lipson, found a market for T-shirts imprinted with the names of the various military camps. The shirts were, he explained, stocked at the camps' post exchanges (PX). Lipson theorized that the printed T-shirt may have been carried into the armed forces by men who picked up the custom on college campuses. After the war, men kept wearing T-shirts, although most were blank. Moreover, according to Mendelsohn, civilian society wasn't as receptive to the garment as outerwear as the military had been. The T-shirt went out of sight -- back under dress shirts -- until 1951, when Marlon Brando helped spruce up its image. During this period, kids apparently had all the fun. Davy Crockett and Roy Rogers were the heroes in the late 1940s and child-size T-shirts were printed with the likenesses of both. Champion was an early licensee for the Roy Rogers theme and Allison Manufacturing bought the rights to produce a pint-size Joe Dimaggio shirt in 1947. Because people at this time did not view T-shirts worn alone as appropriate adult garb, they even used their children as political billboards. According to Mendelsohn, the earliest T-shirt in the Smithsonian collection is a "Dew It With Dewey" shirt printed for the 1948 Truman-Dewey presidential race. Later shirts supported Dwight Eisenhower (1952), John F. Kennedy (1960) and Lyndon Johnson (1964). All, Mendelsohn said, are in child's sizes. Brando helped carry the craze to adults when he played the role of Stanley Kowalski -- in his undershirt -- in the 1951 film, "A Streetcar Named Desire." Essentially, he started a craze among young people and trend-followers, not among older, more established types. According to one industry observer, these early T-shirt wearers may have been the same sort who today wear ripped sweat shirts and dye their hair purple. No matter: The T-shirt was on the loose. For a while, however, it was on the loose by itself. The technology of textile printing was, by today's standards, rudimentary even among the few major manufacturers. Custom printing in small quantities -- the primary offering of the T-shirt shop -- didn't exist. Clearly, some tinkering was necessary before the public's undeveloped appetite for printed apparel could be whetted. The necessary developments came in the mid- and late-1950s. But, first, let's backtrack a bit. History hasn't recorded how the Atlantics of Brooklyn had their uniforms imprinted, and the surviving photograph of the team is of too poor quality to tell. Apparently, however, the custom of imprinted uniforms was not immediately picked up when baseball moved into its professional phase. According to Bill Guilfoile, public relations director for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the first professional team to have its uniforms printed was the Cleveland Indians which, in 1916, pinned cloth numerals to its players shirts. The experiment was dropped after one game, said Guilfoile. It wasn't until 1929 that the New York Yankees had felt letters and numerals sewn on their jerseys for good. However, neither felt nor tackle twill -- the more advanced type of sewn lettering which succeeded it -- are suitable for casual wear. Felt grays at the edges, tackle twill puckers and both tend to rip lose, according to Ray Gluss III, a partner in Raysons Sports of Chicago, a launderer of athletic uniforms for many professional teams. "They both need a lot of maintenance," said Gluss. "Tackle twill, for instance really needs to be ironed to look its best. Most people wouldn't put that type of work into a T-shirt." Surprisingly, though, garments have been imprinted with transfers since at least the 1800s. The Kaumagraph Co. of Wilmington, Del., began producing transfers on the "hot melt" rotogravure process in 1902, according to Dick Hobart, vice president of marketing for the firm. He explained that the process, which was imported from England, involves the use of pigment in a waxy substrate which literally melts when heated. Hobart said that hot melt was and still is widely used for marking such items as Army blankets and tennis balls. In addition, he added, local fair operators used the transfers as novelties during the 1930s and '40s, marking children's shirts for s small fee. "The big drawback was that it wasn't completely opaque," said Hobart. "It will mark a wide variety of substrates and it goes on fast, but it just doesn't cover completely. For many uses, that doesn't matter, but it does for apparel." He added that the waxy substrate never cured, but only cooled and dried. If heated, as apparel is when laundered, the design would run or smear. Fortunately, destiny found other means of starting the T-shirt revolution. Several industry old-timers, among them Spider and Ed Roth (creator of the "Rat Fink" character), trace the beginning of on-demand, individualized printing to the drag-racing culture which was widespread in the 1950s. "Everybody was really into their cars in those days," said Roth, now the head of a California amusement park's in-house printing division. "A lot of people were painting dragons and flames and pinstripes on their dragsters and, eventually, they carried that over to their T-shirts." Spider agreed, noting that he painted his first T-shirt in high school in 1956, using the same brush and oil-based enamel which he was then using to decorate auto bodies. "In retrospect, it was terrible," he said. "The paint soaked through and pulled and sagged. Fortunately, I came across the airbrush." Roth's beginnings were similar. He was pinstriping cars for a Southgate, Calif., body shop when a fellow came in one day in 1961 and asked him to draw a picture of his car on his T-shirt. Roth obliged, with a felt tip marker. Other customers followed and, after a couple of months, he was so bogged down that he got out of auto work completely, bought an airbrush and converted a stall in the shop for his work. From then on, Roth's business was T-shirts. Because he was tall (6 feet, 4 inches) and heavy (more than 300 pounds), Roth took the nickname "Big Daddy." In the early '60s, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's caricatures of monsters and rats were so popular that one company even reproduced several in plastic models. And, still in the business, Roth today sells T-shirts by mail order, as well as videotaped lectures on screen printing and airbrushing. Neither Roth nor Spider claim to have invented the airbrushed T-shirt, however. "Several people were really big for awhile," said Spider. "There was a guy called 'King George' in Detroit and another who just called himself 'Mouse.' "I think the demand and the technology just came together in several places at about the same time." According to both men, airbrushing was wildly popular for a brief period and then faded away, supplanted by the plastisol transfer. The demise of the process, according to Spider, was hastened by hostile fire marshals, who objected to the fumes and flammability of the thinners and oil-based paints. (Now, he added, water-based paints have replaced those and airbrushing is making a comeback.) Plastisol ink was apparently the element which made the printed garment a commercially viable product. According to Gene Krupinski, Florida branch manager for Advance Process Supply and a 49-year veteran of the screen printing industry, plastisols were introduced about 1954, probably the product of several companies working simultaneously. "Plastisol is a lazy man's ink," said Krupinski. "It doesn't dry up in the screens, it's easy to work with and almost mistake-proof. "What its introduction did was take screen printing out of the hands of the professionals and turn if over to the little people." Although the technology for screen printing T-shirts was now in place, it took the appearance of the plastisol transfer to create the demand. That happened in the early 1960s. According to Herb Wells, president of InstaGraphics, technicians for his company and International Coatings, a Cerritos, Calif., ink maker, came up with the first transfer made from plastisol inks in February 1963. There was no specific job for which the process was developed, he said, but Insta wanted a process which could be used for small runs. Whether or not Wells is right, it was in this general period that many manufacturers of transfers went into the business. All of their products, however, were cartoon-type art; the process of incorporating a photograph with plastisol had still not been developed. Don Boelter may deserve the credit for that. Boelter, president of Don Boelter Lithography of Hollywood, Calif., said that his firm came up with the technique in 1969 or 1970 when a local advertising agency asked its help in putting a photo of a hot dog on the front of a T-shirt. "It was four-color process and you can't screen print that," said Boelter. "What we had to do was figure a way to do a lithograph and still get it to go on a shirt." The shirt was to be a promotional item for the Tastee fast-food chain. (History buffs, note: It was printed front and back and cost 79 cents.) Boelter found a way, but didn't give it much more thought. "I really didn't think much of the process," he said recently. "There weren't any T-shirt shops then, so I didn't see any potential. I was certainly not very far-sighted." For more than a year, nothing happened. Then, Boelter's firm engineered another T-shirt advertising program. Soon after, the manufacturers of novelty transfers discovered the process. Boelter himself dates "the T-shirt boom" to as late as 1975 when more than 200,000 T-shirts were printed to promote the film, "Jaws." The following year, of course, Factors came out with its Farrah Fawcett series, a ling which sold "in the millions," according to Stacy Weidel, the company's director of marketing. (According to Weidel, the company doesn't have a single Farrah transfer left. "Farrah herself called me about three years ago," he said, "and wanted to know whereto get one because, apparently, she'd never gotten around to buying one. I sent her our last two.") Boelter added that, also about 1975, titanium oxide was added to plastisol for the first time, thus coloring it and making it opaque. (It had previously been clear.) This allowed transfers to be used on colored shirts for the first time. Oh, yes, the colored shirt. According to Neal of Stedman and Moore of Union, the first colored T's were pale blue and came with pickets. The bigger variety of colored T-shirts, they said, did not come until the early 1970s and was a direct result of growing demand by shirt printers and T-shirt shops. A less-noticeable development, said Neal, was the introduction of cotton-polyester blends in T-shirts in the mid-1960s. T-shirts had previously been all cotton, he said, but the industry's touting of polyester's wrinkle-free characteristics was its way of acknowledging that the T was no longer just underwear. Ironically, Neal said, the acceptance of the printed T-shirt has virtually killed the undershirt business. The current image of the T-shirt as an outwear item and a fashion item is now so firmly established, he said, that it almost cannot be sold as underwear. "Stedman's business used to be 100 percent underwear," said Neal. "Now, we're 20 percent underwear and all the rest is colored T's, most of them for the screen printers and various T-shirt people." Note: This story was chosen as best of entries in an in-house contest among the publisher's 25+ magazines found at: http://www.markedixon.com/new_page_10.htm

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the T-Shirt quickly became an American favorite. Now, a century later, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the T-Shirt remains as popular as ever. The American T-Shirt began during WWI when American troops noticed European soldiers wearing a comfortable and lightweight cotton undershirt during the hot and humid European summer days. Compared to the wool uniforms that the American soldiers wore, these undershirts were cooler and more comfortable and they quickly caught on with the Americans. Due to their simple design, these shirts became known in the USA as "T" shirts or, as we know them now, "T-Shirts". By the 1920's, "T-Shirt" had become an official word in the American English language with it's inclusion in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. By W.W. II, both the Navy and the Army had included the T-Shirt as standard issue underwear. Initially pegged as an undergarment, the T-Shirt soon came in to it's own on the big screen. John Wayne, Marlon Brando and James Dean all shocked Americans by wearing their underwear on national TV. In 1951, Marlon Brando shocked Americans in his film "A Streetcar Named Desire" when his T-Shirt was ripped off of his body revealing his naked chest. By 1955, the T-Shirt was tolerated worn without another shirt covering it. Then James Dean made the T-Shirt real cool in "Rebel Without A Cause". James Dean made the T-Shirt a contemporary symbol of rebellious youth. In the 60's people began to tie dye and screenprint the basic cotton T-Shirt making it an even bigger commercial success. Advances in printing and dying allowed more variety and the Tank Top, Muscle Shirt, Scoop Neck, V-Neck, and many other variations of the T-Shirt came in to fashion. The T-Shirt was inexpensive, in style, and could make any statement you cared to print. The American T-Shirt came into it's own during the late sixties and seventies. Rock and Roll bands began to realize that they could make significant amounts of money selling their T-Shirts. Professional Sports caught on and soon the officially licensed T-Shirt became hot merchandise. During the 80's and 90's the production of T-Shirts and the mechanics of printing on them increased the volume and availability. Soon the American T-Shirt was being called a commodity item in the apparel industry. At the beginning of a new millennium, the t-shirt has entered cyberspace and is now about to become even bigger. The American T-Shirt is well built and it is made to be worn. The artwork symbolizes the cultural and social climate of our times. The printing is state of the art created by true craftspeople. The T-Shirt is a great product. from: http://www.t-shirtcountdown.com

HISTORY OF THE T-SHIRT Until a few decades ago, the shirt off your back was nothing like it is today. Not only did they not resemble today's T-shirts, T-shirts of yesteryear were clearly considered something to be worn underneath clothing, the second generation of union suits. But, most importantly, T-shirts hadn't become a vehicle for advertising, nor were they a stand-alone industry. According to The T-Shirt Book by noted screenprinting industry expert Scott Fresener, the beginning of the T-shirt is credited to the navy. No one, says Fresener, really knows when the first T-shirt was produced. But the U.S. Navy adopted a crew-necked, short-sleeved, white cotton undershirt as issue to be worn under a jumper as early as 1913. The purpose: to cover sailors' chest hairs. It wasn't until the late 1930s that companies including Hanes, Sears & Roebuck, and Fruit of the Loom earnestly started to market the T-shirt. This was an undergarment meant not to be seen. Fresener's all-encompassing study of the T-shirt claims it was Clark Gable who set the T-shirt (and most certainly, his leading lady) back several paces in 1934 when he stripped off his dress shirt in the movie "It Happened One Night," to reveal no T-shirt at all. Women swooned at the bare-chested Gable. Men were quick to follow suit. Nonetheless, T-shirts remained an item to be worn underneath a proper dress shirt, or under a work shirt, for that matter. Sailors, Fresener reports, got the credit again in 1938 when Sears introduced a T-shirt called a "gob" shirt (after sailors) costing 24 cents apiece. For the first time, the T-shirt was pronounced appropriate to wear as an undergarment or as an outer one. The marines followed suit with a white issue that soon was re-issued on sage green for camouflage purposes. And in 1944, the army conducted its own survey on T-shirts to which enlisted men reported they preferred sleeves over sleeveless because of absorption under the arms and a better appearance, among other things. And while Clark Gable may have set the T-shirt back, other movie stars such as Marlon Brando (A Streetcar Named Desire), James Dean (Rebel Without a Cause) and a young Elvis Presley made the T-shirt-as-outerwear sexy. WWII brought about international upheaval and the first printed T-shirts. The Smithsonian Institute displays the oldest printed shirt on record, emblazoned with the phrase "Dew-It with Dewey" from New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey's 1948 presidential campaign. T-shirts were changed forever. Nonetheless, T-shirts were still meant for men. That is, until marketing gurus including Walt Disney began to "flock" letters and simple (often peelable) designs onto T-shirts to be sold as souvenirs. Then came the '60s, when hippies abandoned traditional dress for tie-dye. T-shirts became one of the easiest, and cheapest, forms of clothing to buy and dye. Plastisol, a stretchable ink invented in 1959, was the first revolution in T-shirt design. Then came the iron-on transfer. And finally the litho transfer. An industry was born. And it has grown up. More than one billion T-shirts were sold in 1995. Editor's note: This quick history lesson on the T-shirt was compiled with the help of The T-Shirt Book, by Scott Fresener, Gibbs Smith, publisher (c) 1995. Funny-Tshirts.com! t-shirts for the twenty first century. Browse our t-shirts for FUNNY T-SHIRTS ,FUNNY LADIES BABY T's and FUNNY COOL T-SHIRTS. Check back often. We are constantly adding new designs for your enjoyment. Thank you for shopping and please tell a friend to visit FUNNY T-SHIRTS.com! T-Shirt The T-shirt is one of the beacons of American casual fashion. Popularized by U.S. Navy sailors during the first two world wars, the T-shirt has become an essential element of the American wardrobe. In 1913, the U.S. Navy issued short-sleeved, white cotton crewneck undershirts to sailors. Sailors returning from World War I (1914–18) had grown to prefer the T-shirt to the woolen undershirt that had been the most typical undergarment since 1880. The popularity of the garment grew. By World War II (1939–45), twelve million men were wearing the shirts. News photographs and newsreels showed sailors and soldiers working in only pants and T-shirts. Underwear was exposed to the public for the first time. America had become quite used to the display of American muscle under a thin layer of white T-shirt by war's end. Although the military persuaded America to embrace the T-shirt as an essential element of a man's wardrobe, films turned the T-shirt into an American cultural phenomenon. In 1951, the sculpted muscles of Marlon Brando (1924–) bulged under his T-shirt in A Streetcar Named Desire; his character Stanley Kowalski's powerful masculinity was reflected in Brando's physique and perfectly displayed under his T-shirt. In 1955, James Dean (see entry under 1950s—Film and Theater in volume 3) brought a youthful, anti-establishment attitude to the T-shirt in Rebel Without a Cause. This anti-establishment theme continued into the 1960s with Peter Fonda (1939–) in Easy Rider (1966). The sexual and rebellious characters that actors portrayed in films translated into the behavior of American youths. T-shirts became associated with youthful, American attitudes. Women made T-shirts their own symbol of youth and rebellion during the sexual revolution (see entry under 1960s—The Way We Lived in volume 4) of the 1960s and 1970s. The teasingly revealing anatomy of a T-shirt–clad Jacqueline Bisset (1944–) in The Deep (1977) is perhaps the best illustration of women's adoption of the T-shirt. Since the 1970s, young braless women have lined up in wet T-shirts in bars across the country to display their own sexuality. Soon T-shirts displayed attitudes in type. Although some T-shirts carried printed messages before the 1960s, in the 1970s T-shirts became personal billboards for individual expression. Anything from "Have a Nice Day" to swear words could be found on T-shirts. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, T-shirts were a staple garment of Americans and many others around the world. Offered in a variety of colors, styles, and with unlimited messages, the T-shirt can still be seen adorning young and old alike.

A Short (but Authoritative) History of the T-shirt
© 2003 David Ryan

Most inner-wear historians place the first significant appearance of the t-shirt during World War I. The story, repeated often, is reasonable and probable.
American "Doughboys", as the soldiers were called during the Great War, arrived on the continent with heavy long-john underwear worn under even heavier woolen shirts and pants. This government issued uniform was invaluable when the weather turned foul and chilly, but on a work detail or during a hot spell it was almost unbearable.
The Americans soon saw many French soldiers sporting a short sleeved undergarment made of light cotton, a fabric ideal to work or play in. This t-shirt forerunner quickly became a hot trade item and thousands of the comfortable shirts came home with new owners. The Army and the Navy (for once) caught on fairly quickly and before long the t-shirt was standard issue, changing the lives of millions of young men for the better.
This story explains well the arrival of the t-shirt to these shores but still begs the question of its origin. Did the French truly invent it? And, if not, who did?
The Answer Revealed!
The truth of the matter is that a t-shirt-like garment was used for millennia in Europe and has even been traced back though Roman times and on to ancient Egypt. This simple, ageless garment was the tunic, the true and most credible ancestor of the modern t-shirt. Clear depictions of it have been found in scenes carved in stone dating back at least three thousand years B.C.
The tunic was such a practical and simple garment to make that its use spread throughout the civilized world, making it a standard for thousands of years. In more northern climes, its sleeves were almost always long and the "shirt" itself often reached to the ground, looking less like a t-shirt of today. Back in the torrid heat of Egypt, however, the short-sleeve tunic was often waist length and made of cotton or linen, appearing quite like a modern t-shirt, though much rougher in feel and appearance
As decorative and functional as the traditional tunic could be, it probably never reached the iconic status of today's t-shirt. To understand how that happened, come forward thousands of years and across the sea to the early ‘50's in the United States.
It was in World War II that the t-shirt as we know it today really came into its own. Millions of men were issued their standard issue Shirt, T, Short Sleeve, Mark 1, in their choice of colors, as long as it was white, or sometimes olive drab in the Army and battleship gray in the Navy.
Far from being a seldom-seen piece of underwear, it proved to be practical and comfortable outerwear during such informal events as latrine digging or afternoon ball games. Propaganda shots and movies began pouring in to the home front showing the GI's fighting, working, and playing in their t-shirts. The once hidden garment was coming out of the closet, so to speak, and Americans were quickly becoming accustomed to seeing men wearing it.
Another war in Korea followed and by the early 50's, there were millions of young men in civilian life across the country wearing their t-shirts. It soon spread to the general population, especially among kids. It was, however, still considered an inner garment and hardly proper for polite society. Hollywood, as it has done with so many American customs, would change all of that for good.
In 1951, a character named Stanley Kowalski, played by a brash, in-your-face young actor named Marlon Brando, spent a good deal of the film A Streetcar Named Desire in his t-shirt. The image of Brando in a t-shirt became an icon in its own right and suddenly the young and restless had a style they could call their own and use to thumb their noses at their square parents. Seldom has it been done better than by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause in 1955. By this time, Elvis Presley was also beginning to drive young girls wild in his t-shirt and this previously inner garment would never stay hidden again.
The next big move for the t-shirt came in 1959 in a move called Breathless. A woman, Jean Seberg, wore a t-shirt on screen and for one of the first times, if not the first, a t-shirt with advertising copy on it was seen far and wide. This particular shirt had the words Herald Tribune, a popular English language paper published in Paris, blazoned across it. Evidently only a few of these were made and it quickly became very "in" among the international crowd to wear one. The t-shirt had stepped up a notch on the social ladder, and on the way, it had become a medium in its own right
The T-shirt as a Blank Canvas
The flood gates were opened when it dawned on people that they could use the t-shirt to advertise, brag, inform, shock, bewilder and exhibit whatever their imagination could invent. Companies began to give away and sell t-shirts emblazoned with their corporate logos, often convincing people to pay for the privilege of being a bill board. Certain designs became a matter of cool and hipness, at least until a more unique shirt was sported by some trend setter somewhere.
As a blank canvas, the t-shirt responded to one of its highest callings and only one's imagination and technical ability are the limits. It would be futile to describe the ways the once hidden t-shirt has been used and would require an ongoing and encyclopedic effort. Just looking at the number of t-shirt companies on the Internet today gives one a hint of how important and varied this garment is. Surely, social historians and anthropologists of the future will dedicate vast amounts of time unraveling the data contained in this most popular of modern cultural icons.
Some Interesting Stats:
Recently, the company Jerzeez commissioned a study on the modern use of t-shirts and published some interesting, but not too surprising, facts:
Ninety-one percent of Americans profess to owning a "favorite" T-shirt.
Thirty-four percent say white is the color of their favorite T-shirt, followed by the second and third choices of blue and black.
Sixty-two percent claim to own more than ten t-shirts which would imply that there are nearly 1.5 billion T's in circulation!
Overall 70 percent of men and 54 percent of women have more than 10 t-shirts.
Of people 18 to 24 years of age, 79 percent have more than 10 t-shirts.
Nineteen percent of that younger group owns more than 30 t-shirts.
The number one reason for wearing a t-shirt? Comfort! Found at: http://www.goingpostal.cc/t-shirt_history.htm