The history of the American T-shirt goes back to world war I when American troops noticed European soldiers wearing a comfortable, lightweight cotton undershirt during the hot and humid summer days. The European soldiers dealt with the heat by stripping off to their undershirts while the American soldiers stifled in their hot woolen uniforms. The undershirt quickly caught on with the American.The “T-shirt” got its name Because of its simple design resembling the letter T
By the 1920 s, the T-shirt had became an official word in American English and was included in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. By world war II, both the U.S. Navy and Army had included the T-shirt as a standard piece of underwear.
Initially the t-shirt was worn exclusively as an undergarment, but that changed in the 1950s.The fame of the T-shirt skyrocketed when actors John Wayne,marlon Brando, and James Dean their underwear on the big screen. In 1951, Marlon Brando caused a sensation in his film A Streetcar Named Desire when his T-shirt was ripped off his body to reveal his naked chest. Then James Dean made the T-shirt a contemporary symbol of rebellious youth in the movie Rebel without a cause. It became fashionably cool to wear it as an outer garment.
In the 1960s, the T-shirt became a means of self-expression,as well as to send advertising messages and protests. people began to dye and screen print the basic cotton T-shirt, making it an even bigger commercial success. Advances in printing and dyeing allowed more variety in the look of the T-shirt, and various styles in the cut of T-shirt, such as the tank-top and V-neck, came into fashion. The T-shirt was inexpensive, stylish, and could make any statement you cared to print on it. The American T-shirt came into its own in the late sixties. Rock 'n' roll bands realized that they could make significant amounts of money selling T-shirts printed with the name of thei group. Professional sports followed the bands’ example, and soon the officially licensed team T-shirt became hot merchandise.
The simple,cheap ten-dollar T-shirt has proved a fantastic medium for changing fashions: from the T-shirts with antiwar slogans of the sixties,to the huge oversized T-shirts of the 80s, and the tight tees of the 90s, right up to the designer brands of the twenty-first century, which can cost thousands of dollars. The image image of the T-shirt as an outerwear and fashion item is now firmly established, and iong goes are the days of the T-shirt as underwear.