The idea that underwear was an essential part of one’s wardrobe did not exist a century ago. Dr. Gustav Jaeger convinced a nation in 1880 that regularly washed underwear might be a good thing. In the 19th century folks got by with the “nightshirt”, which was not much more than an extended shirt or shortened dress.

Hanes introduced two-piece men’s underwear for a catalogue sale in 1901. In 1913, the Navy that accidentally started the revolution of underwear by issuing a revolutionary new item to its sailors. The idea was to avoid exposing an appropriate body parts with its V-necked uniforms. The Navy issued a garment that featured short sleeves, a “crew” neckline and a vaguely “T”-shaped silhouette. Later it was shortened to T-shirt. Today, V-necked T-shirts are once again popular.

Just imagine, the price of the T-shirt was $.24 during World War I. And because of the Navy it became a very popular item. By World War II the trend had spread to 12 + million men who were wearing the Navy’s newer, less expensive, shirt. Later, they became known as “skivvies.” The nation grew thrilled to view newsreel images of wartime patriots barely dressed. Even at this early point in its existence the T-shirt became an empty canvas upon which anyone might project his or her sexual fantasies. It allowed individuals to indulge in “showing gender” and the “erotic presentation of the self” in the words of Guggenheim magazine’s Deborah Drier

The T-Shirt have become the one garment capable of displaying class, sexual orientation, culture and the advertising of same. Though 180 million were sold in 1951, the T-shirt’s meteoric rise can be traced to many things American, like the movies.

You can thank actors like Marlon Brando’s (1951) whose brutish portrayal of the lovelorn Stanley Kowalski riveted a nation in “A Streetcar Named Desire” as Brando’s buff pecs and abs were revealed in graphic relief by a thin, stretched tee shirt.

The T-shirt goes its rebellious rock ‘n ‘ roll roots to James Dean as he mumbled his anti-authoritarian way through Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Hippies Wearing Tie-Dyed T-Shirts took on the “Establishment” in Easy Rider (1969), while the Sexual Revolution of the ’70s was given form via Jacqueline Bisset’s wet tee in The Deep (1977). Even the ’80s received its own signifier with Don Johnson’s get-up in Miami Vice. It’s most recent tee-film is Mission: Impossible (1996), with a pretty, synthetic-tee-clad Tom Cruise hanging from a wire in order to do some serious downloading.

The potential for the T-shirt as a human billboard was not recognized by the advertising world for a while. The military, the innovator, caught on first. About the same time, Ivy League schools caught on to the idea of clarifying the pecking order in the fraternities on T-shirts. The first corporate-advertising tee shirt did not appear until the ’60s, when Budweiser featured a can of Bud on the company’s T-shirts. The advertising world finally caught on a in terms of their demographics, especially the captive market of college students. Students began to wear music T-shirts of bands, cool psychedelic T-shirts and today graffiti T-shirts.

Today, rock T-shirt sales are a $500 million business. If you are a tweaker wearing the leaf (cannabis) T-shirt, or an outcast draped in the latest Goth-wear, the tee continues to be the transmitter of instant cultural/psychological affiliation. The T-shirt is everywhere. With the advent of inexpensive printers and appropriate software, the T-shirt has become an equalizing mode of expression. And since anything can be printed on a T-shirt by most anyone, it has not lost its ability to shock. Or even to annoy.

This is based on an article by Ian Grey.

Tags: cool tee shirts, graffiti tee shirts, Music tee shirts

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