The All-American Fashion:
THE T-SHIRT
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 undershirts quickly caught on with the
Americans. The “T-shirt” got its name
because of its simple design resembling the
letter T.
By the 1920s, the T-shirt had become an
official word in American English and was
included in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
By World War II, both the UASA 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
]ames Dean wore 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 dying 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 in to 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
their group. Professional sports followed
the bands’ example, and soon the officially
licensed team T-shirt became hot
merchandise.
Over the decades, some designs have become
classics such as the yellow happy face, the
Rolling Stones’ tongue and lips logo, and the
many variants of I love……
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 of the T-shirt as an
outerwear and fashion item is now firmly
established, and long gone are the days of the
T-shirt as underwear.