The All American Fashion : The T-Shirt
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the T-shirt quickly became an American favorite. Now, a century later, the T-shirt remains as popular as ever. 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 American soldiers stifled in their woolen uniforms. The undershirts quickly caught on with the Americans. Because of their simple design, these shirts became known in the U.S as T shirts or T-shirts. 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 I I, 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. At that time, the actors John Wayne, Marlon Brando, and James Dean all shocked the American movie-going public by wearing their underwear on the big screen. In 1951, 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. Once Hollywood caught on to the T-shirt, its popularity soared. In the 1960s, during the counter culture revolution, 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 their group. Professional sports caught on, and soon the officially licensed T-shirt became hot merchandise. The (simple) T-shirt has proved a fantastic medium for changing fashions: from the T-shirts with an tower slogans of the sixties, to the huge oversized T-shirts of the 80s, and the tight tees of the 90s, right up to the customized trend of the 2000s, The current image of the T-shirt as an outerwear and fashion item is now so firmly established, that it, actually, can no longer be sold as underwear.